The great events by famous historians : a comprehensive and readable account of the world's history, emphasizing the more important events, and presenting these as complete narratives in the master-words of the most eminent historians ...

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This is Volume V of a complete set of

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BINDING
Vol. V

The binding of this volume is a facsimile of the original in the
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It was executed for Edward VI by Thomas Berthelet, Royal
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wnii^qf Christianity
TnRus

Painting by A. Kan

THE GREAT EVENTS

BY

FAMOUS HISTORIANS

A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD S
HISTORY. EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS. AND PRE-
SENTING THESF. AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE MASTER- WORDS
OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS

NON-SECTARIAN NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL

ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATH-
ERED FROM THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA
AND EUROPE. INCLUDING BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS
TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED NARRATIVES. AR-
RANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY. WITH THOROUGH INDICES, BIBLIOG-
RAPHIES. CHRONOLOGIES. AND COURSES OF READING

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D.

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D.
JOHN RUDD, LL.D.

With a staff" of specialists

VOLUME V

jljatfonal Alumni

COPYRIGHT, 1905,

BY THE NATIONAL ALUMNI

VI

CONTENTS
VOLUME V

An Outline Narrative of the Great Events, . . »

CHARLES F. HORNE

Feudalism : Its Prankish Birth and English Develop-
ment (gth to I2th Century), . I

WILLIAM STUBBS

Decay of the Prankish Empire

Division into Modern France, Germany, and Italy

(AJ>. 843-911) 22

FRANCOIS P. G. GUIZOT

Career of A If red the Great (A.D. 8? 1-901), . . 49

THOMAS HUGHES
JOHN R. GREEN

Henry the Fowler Founds the Saxon Line of German

Kings
Origin of the German Burghers or Middle Classes (A.J>.

911-936), iv 82

WOLFGANG MENZEL

Conquest of Egypt by the Fatimites (A.D. 969), . ' * 94

STANLEY LANE-POOLE

Growth and Decadence of Chivalry (lOth to l$tk

Century), 109

LEON GAUTIER

Conversion of Vladimir the Great

Introduction of Christianity into Russia (A.D. 988-

1015), ... . . . , 128

A. N. MOURAVIEFF

vii

viii CONTENTS

PAGE

Leif Ericson Discovers America (A.D. 1000), . . . 141

CHARLES C. RAFN
SAGA OF ERIC THE RED

Mahometans :n India

Bloody Invasions under Mahmud (A.D. 1000), . . 151

ALEXANDER DOW

Canute Becomes King of England (A.D. 1017), . . . 104

DAVID HUME

Henry III Deposes the Popes (A.D. 1048

The German Empire Controls the Papacy, . . . 177

FERDINAND GREGOROVIUS
JOSEPH DARRAS

Dissension and Separation of tlie Greek and Roman

Churches (A.D. 1054), 189

HENRY F. TOZER
JOSEPH DEHARBE

Norman Conquest of England

Battle of Hastings ( A.D. 1066), 204

SIR EDWARD S. CREASY

Triumphs of HUdebrand

" The Turning-point of the Middle Ages"

Henry IV Begs for Mercy at Canossa (A.D. 1073-

1085), . 231

ARTHUR R. PENNINGTON
ARTAUD DE MONTOR

Completion of the Domesday Book (A.D. 1086), . . 242

CHARLES KNIGHT

Decline of ilie Moorish Power in Spain

Growth amd Decay of the Almoravide and Almohade

Dynasties (A.D. 1086-1214), .... 256

S. A. DUNHAM

The First Crusade (A.D. 1096-1099), . . . .276

SIR GEORGE W. COX

Foundation of the Order of Knights Templars (A.D. 1118), 301

CHARLES G. ADDISON

CONTENTS ix

PAGE

Stephen Usurps tJie English Crown

His Conflicts with Matilda

Decisive Influence of the Church (A.D. 1135-1154), . 317

CHARLES KNIGHT

Antipapal Democratic Movement

Arnold of Brescia

St. Bernard and the Second Crusade (A.D. 1145—

1155), • ... .340

JOHANN A. W. NEANDER

Decline of the Byzantine Empire

Ravages of Roger of Sicily (A.D. 1146), . . . 353

GEORGE FINLAY

Universal Chronology (A.D. 843-1161 ), . . . 365

JOHN RUDD

ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME V

PAOB

Beginning of Christianity in Russia (page IJO),

Painting by A. Kampf. Frontispiece

Henry IV, Emperor of Germany, stands barefooted in
the snow at Canossa, begging admission to Pope
Gregory VII (Hildebrand), .... 239
Painting by O. Friedrich.

AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE

TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, COK-
NECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF

THE GREAT EVENTS

(FROM CHARLEMAGNE TO FREDERICK BARBAROSSA)

CHARLES F. HORNE

[HE three centuries which follow the downfall
of the empire of Charlemagne laid the foun-
dations of modern Europe, and made of it
a world wholly different, politically, socially,
and religiously, from that which had pre-
ceded it. In the careers of Greece and Rome
we saw exemplified the results of two sharply
opposing tendencies of the Aryan mind, the one toward individ-
ualism and separation, the other toward self-subordination and
union.

In the time of Charlemagne's splendid successes it appeared
settled that the second of these tendencies was to guide the Teu-
tonic Aryans, that the Europe of the future was to be a single
empire, ever pushing out its borders as Rome had done, ever
subduing its weaker neighbors, until the "Teutonic peace"
should be substituted for the shatte-ed " Roman peace," soldiers
should be needed only for the duties of police, and a whole civil-
ized world again obey the rule of a single man.

Instead of this, the race has since followed a destiny of sepa-
ration. Europe is divided into many countries, each of them a
vast camp bristling with armies and arsenals. Civilization has
continued hag-ridden by war even to our own day, and, during
at least seven hundred of the years that followed Charlemagne,
•mankind made no greater progress hi the arts and sciences than

ziii

XIV

the ancients had sometimes achieved in a single century. We
do indeed believe that at last we have entered on an age of rapid
advance, that individualism has justified itself. The wider per-
sonal liberty of to-day is worth all that the race has suffered for
it. Yet the retardation of wellnigh a thousand years has surely
been a giant price to pay.

DOWNFALL OF CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE

This mighty change in the course of Teutonic destiny, this
breakdown of the Prankish empire, was wrought by two destroy-
ing forces, one from within, one from without. From within
came the insubordination, the still savage love of combat, the
natural turbulence of the race. It is conceivable that, had
Charlemagne been followed on the throne by a son and then a
grandson as mighty as he and his immediate ancestors, the
course of the whole broad earth would have been altered. The
Franks would have grown accustomed to obey; further con-
quest abroad would have insured peace at home; the imperial
power would have become strong as in Roman days, when the
most feeble emperors could not be shaken. But the descend-
ants of Charlemagne sank into a decline. He himself had di-
rected the fighting energy of the Franks against foreign enemies.
His son and successor had no taste for wai, and so allowed his
idle subjects time to quarrel with him and with one another.
The next generation, under the grandsons of Charlemagne, de-
voted their entire lives to repeated and furious civil wars, in
which the empire fell apart, the flower of the Prankish race per-
ished, and the strength of its dominion was sapped to nothing-
ness.1

There were three of these grandsons, and, when their strug-
gle had left them thoroughly exhausted, they divided the empire
into three. Their treaty of Verdun (843) is often quoted as be-
ginning the modern kingdoms of Germany, France, and Italy.
The division was in some sense a natural one, emphasized by
differences of language and of race. Italy was peopled by descend-
ants of the ancient Italians, with a thin intermingling of Goths
and Lombards; France held half-Romanized Gauls, with a very
considerable percentage of the Prankish blood; while Germany
1 See Decay of Prankish Empire^ page «„

THE GREAT EVENTS xv

was far more barbaric than the other regions. Its people,
whether Frank or Saxon, were all pure Teuton, and still spoke
in their Teutonic or German tongue.

The Franks themselves, however, did not regard this as a
breaking of their empire. They looked on it as merely a family
affair, an arrangement made for the convenience of government
among the descendants of the great Charles. So firm had been
that mighty hero's grasp upon the national imagination, that the
Franks accepted as matter of course that his family should bear
rule, and rallied round the various worthless; members of it with
rather pathetic loyalty, fighting for them one against the other,
reuniting and redividing the varLus fragments of the empire,
until the feeble Carlovingian race died out completely.

It is thus evident that there was a strong tendency toward
union among the Franks. But there was also an outside influ-
ence to disrupt their empire. Charlemagne had not carried
far enough their career of conquest. He subdued the Teutons
within the limits of Germany, but he did not reach their weaker
Scandinavian brethren to the north, the Danes and Norsemen.
He chastised the Avars, a vague non- Aryan people east of Ger-
many, but he could not make provision against future Asiatic
swarms. He humbled the Arabs in Spain, but he did not break
their African dominion. From all these sources, as the Franks
grew weaker instead of stronger, their lands became exposed to
new invasion.

THE LAST INVADERS

Let us take a moment to trace the fortunes of these outside
races, though the main destiny of the future still lay with Teu-
tonic Europe.

In speaking of the followers of Mahomet, we might perhaps
at this period better drop the term Arabs, and call them Sara-
cens. They were thus known to the Christians; and their con-
quests had drawn in their train so many other peoples that in
truth there was little pure Arab blood left among them. The
Saracens, then, had begun to lose somewhat of their intense
fanaticism. Feuds broke out among them. Different chiefs es-
tablished different kingdoms or " caliphates," whose dominion
became political rather than religious. Spain had one ruler,

xvi AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF

Egypt1 another, Asia a third. In the eleventh century an army
of Saracens invaded India2 and added that strange and ancient
land to their domain. Europe they had failed to conquer; but
their fleets commanded the Mediterranean. They held all its
islands, Sicily, Crete, Sardinia, and Corsica. They plundered
the coast towns of France and Italy. There was a Saracenic rav-
aging of Rome.

On the whole, however, the wave of Mahometan conquest
receded. In Spain the remnants of the Christian population,
Visigoths, Romans, and still older peoples, pressed their way
down from their old-time, secret mountain retreats and began
driving the Saracens southward.* The decaying Roman Empire
of the East still resisted the Mahometan attack; Constantinople
remained a splendid city, type and picture of what the ancient
world had been.

While the Saracens were thus laying waste the Frankish em
pire along its "Mediterranean coasts, a more dangerous enemy
was assailing it from the east. Toward the end of the ninth cen-
tury the Magyars, an Asiatic, Turanian people, burst on Europe,
as the Huns had done five centuries before. Indeed, the Chris-
tians called these later comers Huns also, and told of them the
same extravagant tales of terror. The land which the, Magyars
settled was called Hungary. They dwell there and possess it
even to this day, the only instance of a Turanian people having
permanently established themselves hi an Aryan continent and
at the expense of Aryan«neighbors.

From Hungary the Magyars soon advanced to the German
border line, and made fierce plundering inroads upon the more
civilized regions beyond. They came on horseback, so that the
slower Teutons could never gather quickly enough to resist them.
The marauding parties, as they learned the wealth and weak-
ness of this new land, grew bigger, until at length they were ar-
mies, and defeated the German Franks in pitched battles, and
spread desolation through all the country. They returned now
every year. Their ravages extended even to the Rhine and to
the ancient Gallic land beyond. The Frankish empire seemed

r
1 See Conquest of Egypt by the Fatimites, page 94.

* See Mahometans in India, page 151.

8 See Decline of the Moorish Power in Spain, page 2,56

THE GREAT EVENTS xvH

doomed to regnact, in a smaller, far more savage way, the fate of
Rome.

Yet more widespread in destruction, more important in re-
sult than the raids of either Saracens or Magyars, were those of
the Scandinavians or Northmen. These, the latest, and perhaps
therefore the finest, flower of the Teutonic stock, are closer to us
and hence better known than the early Goths or Franks. Shut
off in their cold northern peninsulas and islands, they had grown
more slowly, it may be, than their southern brethren. Now they
burst suddenly on the world with spectacular dramatic effect,
wild, fierce, and splendid conquerors, as keen of intellect and
quick of wit as they were strong of arm and daring of advent-
ure.

We see them first as sea-robbers, pirates, venturing even in
Charlemagne's time to plunder the German and French coasts.
One tribe of them, the Danes, had already been harrying Eng-
land and Ireland. Only Alfred,1 by heroic exertions, saved a
fragment of his kingdom from them. Later, under Canute,*
they become its kings. The Northmen penetrate Russia and
appear as rulers of the strange Slavic tribes there; they settle
in Iceland, Greenland, and even distant and unknown Amer-
ica.3

Meanwhile, after Charlemagne's death they become a main
factor in the downfall of his empire. Year after year their little
ships plunder the undefended French coast, until it is abandoned
to them and becomes a desert. They build winter camps at the
river mouths, so that in the spring they need lose less tune and
can hurry inland after their retreating prey. Sudden in attack,
strong in defence, they venture hundreds of miles up the wind-
ing waterways. Paris is twice attacked by them and must fight
for life. They penetrate so far up the Loire as to burn Orleans.

It was under stress of all these assaults that the Franks,
grown too feeble to defend themselves as Charlemagne would
have done, by marching out and pursuing the invaders to their
own homes, developed instead a system of defence which made
the Middle Ages what they were. All central authority seemed

1 See Career of Alfred the Great, page 49.

* See Canute Becomes King of England, page 164.

* S«« Leif Ericson Discovers America, page 141

xviii AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF

lost; each little community was left to defend itself as best it
might. So the local chieftain built himself a rude fortress, which
in time became a towered castle; and thither the people fled in
time of danger. Each man looked up to and swore faith to this,
his own chief, his immediate protector, and took little thought of
a distant and feeble king or emperor. Occasionally, of course,
a stronger lord or king bestirred himself, and demanded homage
of these various petty chieftains. They gave him such service as
they wished or as they must. This was the "feudal system." l

The inclination of each lesser lord was obviously to assert as
much independence as he could. He naturally objected to pay-
ing money or service without benefit received ; and he could see
no good that this "overlord" did for him or for his district. It
seemed likely at this time that instead of being divided into three
kingdoms, the Prankish empire would split into thousands of
little castled states.

That is, it seemed so, after the various marauding nations
were disposed of. The Northmen were pacified by presenting
them outright with the coast lands they had most harried. Their
great leader, Rolf, accepted the territory with some vague and
ill-kept promise of vassalage to the French King, and with a very
firmly held determination that he would let no pirates ravage his
land or cross it to reach others. So the French coast became
Normandy, and the Northmen learned the tongue and manners
of their new home, and softened their harsh name to "Norman,"
even as they softened their harsh ways, and rapidly became the
most able and most cultured of Frenchmen.

As for the Saracens, being unprogressive and no longer en-
thusiastic, they grew ever feebler, while the Italian cities, being
Aryan and left to themselves, grew strong. At length their
fleets met those of the Saracens on equal terms, and defeated
them, and gradually wrested from them the control of the Medi-
terranean. Invaders were thus everywhere met as they came,
locally. There was no general gathering of the Prankish forces
against them.

The repulse of the Huns proved the hardest matter of all.
Fortunately for the Germans, their line of Carlovingian emper-

1 See Feudalism: Its Prankish Birth and English Development^
page i.

THE GREAT EVENTS xix

The cruel Alva was sent by Philip to suppress them, and for
six years (1567-1573) his savagery and that of his brutal Spanish
soldiers made the Netherlands a theatre of horror — and of hero-
ism. The revolt in the southern provinces, now Belgium, was
finally put down. The inhabitants there were mostly Catholics,
and their strife was only against the general despotism and
cruelty of Spain. But the North would never yield. The terrific
siege of Leyden, with its accompanying horrors of starvation and
defiance, is world-famed.1 In 1581 Holland finally proclaimed
its complete independence of Spain.

At enormous expense and waste of his American treasure, Phi-
lip II continued to pour troops and troops into the rebellious prov-
inces. Their leader throughout had been the highest of their no-
bles, William of Orange, called "the silent." Philip openly
proclaimed an enormous reward to the man who could reach and
assassinate this obstacle in his path; and at last after repeated
attempts the reward was earned (1584). 2 The fall of William
ended all chance of the union of the northern and southern prov-
inces; he had been the only man all trusted. But Holland un-
der his son Maurice continued the strife even more bitterly. No
sacrifice was too great for the heroic Dutch. Spain was ex-
hausted at last; Philip II died a disappointed man. His son,
Philip III, in 1609 consented sullenly to a truce — peace he would
not call it — and it was many years before Spain formally acknowl-
edged the independence of her defiant provinces.

SUCCESSES OF PHILIP

Philip II had met also an even heavier defeat from Protestant
England. But before speaking of this, let us look to his few suc-
cesses. In 1580 he added Portugal to his dominions and so,
temporarily at least, united the entire Spanish peninsula as one
state. This gave him control over the vast Portuguese colonial
possessions and over the rich trade with India and the isles be-
yond. Australia was probably touched more than once by his
ships, though not definitely discovered until 1606.*

It was under Philip that in 1564 the Spaniards extended their

1 See Siege of Leyden, page 145.

9 See Assassination of William of Orange, page 202.

8 See Earliest Positive Discovery of Australia, page 34a

xx AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF

American settlements northward and founded St. Augustine, the
first town within the present mainland of the United States. The
French had attempted to plant a colony even earlier. At the first
outbreak of their civil wars, some Huguenots had fled from perse-
cution to the coast of Florida (1562). The Spaniards regarded
this as an encroachment on their territories. Moreover, the in-
truders were heretics. They were attacked and massacred. It
was partly to keep further Frenchmen off the coast that St. Au-
gustine was founded.1

An even more important triumph came to Philip in 1571, when
his ships, united with those of Venice and other states, gained
a great naval victory over the Turks. This battle of Lepanto
stands among the turning-points of history. It marks the check-
ing of the Turkish power which for over two centuries had been
rising steadily against Europe. Lepanto crushed the naval su-
premacy which the followers of Mahomet had more than once
asserted over the Mediterranean. For another century and more
they remained formidable on land, but at sea they never recovered
their ascendency.3

At Lepanto as a common soldier, fought Miguel de Cervantes,
a Spaniard, who, toward the close of a roving life, settled down to
literature in his native land, and after Philip's death wrote what
was in many ways a satire upon that monarch's rule in Spain.
Cervantes' Don Quixote altered the taste of the whole literary
world. Its influence spread from Spain to France and over all
Europe. It was the death-song of ancient chivalry, the first book
since the days of Dante to alter markedly the literary thought of
man.3

Of the world farther eastward during this period we need say
little. The fortunes of Germany, luckily for herself, had been
separated from those of Spain at the abdication of Charles V.
The Hapsburg possessions in Austria had been bequeathed to his
brother Ferdinand; and both Ferdinand and his next successor
as emperor of Germany abided by the conditions of that re-
markable religious peace of Augsburg which had allowed every
prince to settle the religion of his own domains. Although them-

1 See Founding of St. Augustine, page 70.

5 See Lepanto : Destruction of the Turkish Naval Power, page 100.

3 See Cervantes'1 Don Quixote Reforms Literature, page 325.

THE GREAT EVENTS xxi

selves Catholic, the Emperors were not strict in enforcing Cathol-
icism even in their own Austrian domains. They reserved all
their effort for the struggle against the Turks. Disputes between
the leaders of the differing faiths did of course occur, but none
reached an active stage until a later generation.

Sweden rose greatly in importance. Poland declined. Rus-
sia was almost conquered by one or the other, a prey, like France,
to civil wars. Yet some Cossacks in her service, wandering plun-
derers really, invaded Siberia, defeated the few scattered Tartar
tribes, and annexed the entire waste of Northern Asia to the
Russian crown. Never again was this to be a secretly growing,
unknown world from which vast hordes might suddenly burst
forth on Europe.1

THE ELIZABETHAN AGE

Turn now to England, emerging at last from the exhaustion
of the Wars of the Roses to assert her place among the great
powers of the world. Philip and Elizabeth, restrained by other
anxieties, might maintain a hollow peace at home: they could not
control the rising spirits of the English nation. English sailors,
the most daring in the world, penetrated all seas. Spanish and
Portuguese ships had been almost everywhere before them. The
North was still half a century behind the South in progress. Yet
the difference is worth noting. On the southern ships a few gal-
lant, aristocratic leaders headed a crowd of trembling peasants,
ever begging to be taken home, sometimes mutinying through
very frenzy of fear. On England's ships each sailor was as stub-
born and dauntless as his chief, differing from him only in the
intellect to command.

Such men as these were little like to accept Spanish claims to
all the wealth of all the new lands of the world. They cruised at
will, and fought the Spaniards successfully wherever found.
Frobisher began the long and dreary search for the "northwest
passage," by which the northern countries of Europe might send
ships to round America and reach Asia as Magellan had done to
southward.2 Gilbert raised his country's standard over New-
foundland, England's first clearly established possession beyond

'See Cossack Conquest of 'Siberia, page 181.

5 See Search for the Northwest Passage by Frobisher, page 156.

xxii AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF

seas.1 The memory of the Cabots' voyages was revived, and in
their name England claimed the North American coast. Sir
Walter Raleigh attempted to plant a colony, and called the new
land Virginia in honor of the Virgin Queen.2

To Drake, greatest of all these wild adventurers, was it left
to embroil his country utterly with Spain. He followed Magel-
lan in circumnavigating the globe, and wherever he went he left
a track of plundered Spanish settlements behind. Elizabeth was
in despair; she alternately knighted him and threatened to hang
him as a pirate. The Spaniards, re-reading his name, called him
the Dragon. He was the terror of their seas.

At last the long accumulating quarrel of religious and com-
mercial motives reached a head. Philip began gathering in all
his ports that vast "Invincible Armada," which was to assert his
supremacy on sea as upon land, to crush England and Protestant-
ism forever. This was the supreme effort of his life. There was
no question as to where the blow would fall. Elizabeth knew it
corning, not to be evaded by any policy or concessions. Drake
knew it coming, and, taking time by the forelock, sailed boldly
into the harbor of Cadiz to "singe the King of Spain's beard,"
destroyed all the ships and stores accumulated there.8 But Cadiz
was only one port among several where preparations were be-
ing hurried forward; there were others the hardy Dragon could
not penetrate. The next year (1588) the "Invincible Armada"
sailed for England.

The story of its destruction is too well known for repetition.
This was England's proudest achievement. Philip accepted the
terrific downfall of all his scheming and ambitions with a gallant
calm. He had truly believed that Heaven wished him to re-
assert Catholicism. He accepted the storms which partly de-
stroyed his fleet as the divine refusal of his aid. "You could
not strive against the will of Heaven," he said kindly to his
defeated admiral.4

In England, the repeated plunderings of Spanish ships, and

1 See First Colony of England beyond Seas, page 198.
9 See Naming of Virginia : The Lost Colony, page 211.

3 See Drake Captures Cartagena : He " Singes the King of Spain's
Beard" at Cadiz, page 230.

4 See Defeat of the Spanish Armada, page 251.

THE GREAT EVENTS xxiii

THE CONDITION OF SOCIETY UNDER FEUDALISM

Amid all this turmoil of the upper classes, one would like
much to know what was the condition, what the lives, of the
common people. Unfortunately, the data are very slight. We
see dimly the peasant staring from his field as the armed knights
ride by; we see him fleeing to the shelter of the forests before
more savage bandits. We see the people of the cities drawing
together, building walls around their towns, and defying in
their turn their so-called " overlords." We see Henry the City-
builder thus become champion of the lower classes, despite the
strenuous warning of his conservative and not wholly disinter-
ested barons. We see shadowy troops of armed merchants
drift along the unsafe roads. And, most interesting perhaps of
all, we see one Arnold of Brescia,1 an Italian monk, advocating
a democracy, actually urging a return to what he supposed early
Rome to have been, a government by the masses. Arnold, too,
you see, was in advance of his time. He was executed by the
advice of even so good and wise a man as St. Bernard. But the
principle of modern life was there, the germ seems to have been
planted. These humble people of the cities, " citizens," grow to
be rulers of the world.

There was a revival, too, of learning in this quieter age.
Schools and universities become clearly visible. Abelard teaches
at the great University of Paris, lectures to "forty thousand
students," if one chooses to believe in such carrying power of his
voice, or such radiating power of his influence at second hand
through those who heard.

The arts spring up, great cathedrals are begun, the wonder
and despair of even twentieth-century resources. Royal ladies
work on tapestries, queer things in their way, but certainly not
barbaric. Musical notation is improved. Manuscripts are gor-
geously illumined. Paintings and mosaics, though of the crud-
est, reappear on long-barren walls. Civilization begins to ad-
vance with increasing stride.

THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY

Of all the influences that through these wandering and deso-
late ages had sustained humanity and helped it onward, the
1 See Antipapal Democratic Movement, page 340.

xxiv AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF

mightiest has been left to speak of last. It was Christianity, a
Christianity which had by now taken definite form as the Roman
Catholic Church. Strongest of all the institutions bequeathed
by the ancient empire to her conquerors was this Church. In-
deed, it has been said that Rome had influenced Christianity
quite as much as Christianity did Rome. The legal-minded
Romans insisted on the laying out of exact doctrines and
creeds, on the building of a definite organization, a priesthood,
a hierarchy. They lent the weight of law to what had been but
individual belief and impulse. Thus the Church grew hard
and strong.

In the same manner that the early emperors had ordered the
persecution of Christianity, so the later ones ordered the perse-
cution of heathendom, nor had the Church grown civilized or
Christian enough to oppose this method of conversion. Luckily
for all parties, however, the heathen were scarce sufficiently en-
thusiastic to insist on martyrdom, and so the persecuting spirit
which man ultimately imparted to even the purest of religions
remained latent.

With the downfall of Rome there came another interval in
which the Church was weak, and was trampled on by barba-
rians, and was heroic. Then the bishops of Rome joined forces
with Pe*pin and Charlemagne. Christianity became physically
powerful again. The Saxons were converted by the sword. So,
also, in Henry the Fowler's time, were the Slavic Wends. These
Roman bishops, or "popes," were accepted unquestioned
throughout Western Europe as the leaders of a militant Chris-
tianity, a position never after denied them until the sixteenth
century. In the East, however, the bishops of Constantinople
insisted on an equal, if not higher, authority, and so the two
churches broke apart.1

In the West, Christianity undoubtedly did great good. Its
teachings, though applied by often fallible instruments and in
blundering ways, yet never completely lost sight of their own
higher meanings of mercy and peace. From the Abbey of Cluny
originated that quaint mediaeval idea of the " truce of God," by
which nobles were very widely persuaded to restrict their private

1 See Dissension and Separation of the Greek and Roman Churches.
page 189,

THE GREAT EVENTS xxv

wars to the middle of the week, and reserve at least Friday, Sat-
urday, and Sunday as days of brotherly love and religious devo-
tion. The Church also, from very early days, founded monas-
teries, wherein learning and the knowledge of the past were kept
alive, where pity continued to exist, where the oppressed found
refuge. It is from these monasteries that all the arts and schol-
arship of the eleventh century begin dimly to emerge.

Moreover, the fact that the Teutons were all of a common
religion undoubtedly held them much closer together, made
them more merciful among themselves, more nearly a unit
against the outside world. Perhaps in this respect more impor-
tant even than the religion was the Church ; that is, the hierar-
chy, the vast army of monks and priests, abbots and bishops,
spread over all kingdoms, yet looking always toward Rome.
Here at least was one common centre for Western civilization,
one mighty influence that all men acknowledged, that all to some
faint extent obeyed.

THE GROWTH OF THE PAPACY

The power thus concentrating in the Roman papacy made
the office one to attract eager ambition. It has a political history
of its own. At first the Christian populace that continued to dwell
in Rome despite the repeated spoliations, elected, from among
themselves, their own pope or bishop, regarding him not only as
their spiritual guide, but as their earthly leader and protector
also. Naturally, in their distress, they chose the very ablest man
they could, their wisest and their noblest. It was no pleasant
task being pope in those dark days; and sometimes the bravest
shrank from the position.

But centuries of war and self-defence developed a Roman
populace more fierce and savage and degenerate, while the
growing importance of their pope beyond the city's walls brought
wealth and splendor to his office. The result was that some very
unsaintly popes were elected amid unseemly squabbles. The
conditions surrounding the high office became so bad that they
were felt as a disgrace throughout all Christendom; and in 1046
the German emperor Henry III took upon himself to depose
three fiercely contending Romans, each claiming to be pope.
He appointed in their stead a candidate of his own, not a dweller

xxvi AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF

in the city at all, but a German. Henry, therefore, must have
considered the duties of the pope as bishop of the Romans to be
far less important than his duties as head of the Church outside
of Rome.1

So necessary had this interference by the Emperor become
that it was everywhere approved. Yet as he continued to appoint
pope after pope, churchmen realized that in the hands of an evil
emperor this method of securing their head might prove quite as
dangerous and unsatisfactory as the former one. So the Church
took the matter in hand and declared that a conclave of its own
highest officials should thereafter choose the man who was to lead
them.

Under this surely more suitable arrangement, the papal office
rose at once in dignity. It was held for a time by true leaders,
earnest prelates of the highest worth and ability. We have said
that the rank of the bishop of Rome as head of the Church had
never been seriously questioned among the Teutons; but now
the popes asserted a political authority as well. They regarded
themselves, theoretically, as supreme heads of the entire Chris-
tian world. They claimed and even partly exercised the right to
create and depose kings and emperors. To such a supremacy as
this, however, the Teutons were still too rude and warlike to
submit. Much is made of the fact that the Emperor Henry IV
was compelled to come as a suppliant to Pope Gregory at Canossa,
io77-2 But this submission was only forced on him by quar-
rels with his barons, who welcomed the Pope as a chance ally.
It proved the power of feudalism rather than that of religion.
Still we may trace here the beginnings of a later day when spirit
was really to dominate bodily force, when ideas should prove
stronger than swords.

THE FIRST CRUSADE

Under these aroused and able popes, the Western world was
stirred to the first widespread religious enthusiasm since the an-
cient days of persecution. Jerusalem, long in the hands of a tol-
erant sect of Saracens who welcomed the coming of Christian
worshippers as a source of revenue, was captured in 1075 by an-

1 See Henry III Deposes the Popes, page 177.
* See Triumphs of Hildebrand, page 231.

THE GREAT EVENTS cxvii

other more fanatic Mahometan sect, and word came back to Eu-
rope that pilgrimage was stopped.

The crusades followed. A great mass of warriors from every
nation of the West, men who certainly had never intended to go
on pilgrimage themselves, were roused to what seems a some-
what perverse anger of religious devotion. Under the lead of
Godfrey of Bouillon they marched eastward, saw the wonders
of Constantinople, marvellous indeed to their ruder eyes, de-
feated the sultans of Asia Minor and of Antioch, and ended by
storming Jerusalem, and erecting there a Christian kingdom
where Mahometanism had ruled for nearly five hundred
years.1

Of course, a great flow of pilgrims followed them. Religious
orders of knighthood were formed 2 to help defend the shrine of
Christ and to extend Christian conquest farther through the sur-
rounding regions. Travel began again. Europe, after having
forgotten Asia for seven centuries, was introduced once more to
its languor, its splendor, and its vices. The Aryan peoples had
at last filled full their little world of Western Europe. They had
reached among themselves a state of law and union, confused
and weak, perhaps, yet secure enough to enable them once more
to overflow their boundaries and become again the aggressivej
intrusive race we have seen them in earlier days,

1 See The First Crusade, page 276.

* See Foundation of the Order of Knights Templars ', page 301.

IFOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME TI j

FEUDALISM : ITS PRANKISH BIRTH AND
ENGLISH DEVELOPMENT

NINTH TO TWELFTH CENTURY

WILLIAM STUBBS

That social system — however varying in different times and places — in
which ownership of land is the basis of authority is known in history as
feudalism. From the time of Clovis, the Frankish King, who died in A.D.
511, the progress of the Franks in civilization was slow, and for more
than two centuries they spent their energies mainly in useless wars. But
Charles Martel and his son, Pe'pin the Short — the latter dying in 768 —
built up a kingdom which Charlemagne erected into a powerful empire.
Under the predecessors of Charlemagne the beginnings of feudalism,
which are very obscure, maybe said vaguely to appear. Charles Martel
had to buy the services of his nobles by granting them lands, and al-
though he and Pe'pin strengthened the royal power, which Charlemagne
still further increased, under the weak rulers who followed them the forces
of the incipient feudalism again became active, and the State was divided
into petty countships and dukedoms almost independent of the king.

The gift of land by the king in return for feudal services was called a
feudal grant, and the land so given was termed a " feud " or " fief." In
the course of time fiefs became hereditary. Lands were also sometimes
usurped or otherwise obtained by subjects, who thereby became feudal
lords. By a process called " subinfeudation," lands were granted in par-
cels to other men by those who received them from the king or otherwise,
and by these lower landholders to others again ; and as the first recipient
became the vassal of the king and the suzerain of the man who held next
below him, there was created a regular descending scale of such vassalage
and suzerainty, in which each man's allegiance was directly due to his
feudal lord, and not to the king himself. From the king down to the low-
est landholder all were bound together by obligation of service and de-
fence ; the lord to protect his vassal, the vassal to do service to his lord.

These are the essential features of the social system which, from its
early growth under the later Carlovingians in the ninth century, spread
over Europe and reached its highest development in the twelfth century.
At a time midway between these periods it was carried by the Norman
Conquest into England. The history of this system of distinctly Frank-
ish origin — a knowledge of which is absolutely essential to a proper under

E., VOL. V.— I.

2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM

standing of history and the evolution of our present social system— is told
by Stubbs with that discernment and thoroughness of analysis which
have given him his rank as one of the few masterly writers in this field.

FEUDALISM had grown up from two great sources — the

beneficium, and the practice of commendation — and had
been specially fostered on Gallic soil by the existence of a sub-
ject population which admitted of any amount of extension in
the methods of dependence.

The beneficiary system originated partly in gifts of land
made by the kings out of their own estates to their kinsmen and
servants, with a special undertaking to be faithful; partly in
the surrender by land-owners of their estates to churches or
powerful men, to be received back again and held by them as
tenants for rent or service. By the latter arrangement the
weaker man obtained the protection of the stronger, and he
who felt himself insecure placed his title under the defence of
the church.

By the practice of commendation, on the other hand, the
inferior put himself under the personal care of a lord, but with-
out altering his title or divesting himself of his right to his estate;
he became a vassal and did homage. The placing of his hands
between those of his lord was the typical act by which the con-
nection was formed; and the oath of fealty was taken at the
same time. The union of the beneficiary tie with that of
commendation completed the idea of feudal obligation — the
twofold engagement: that of the lord, to defend; and that of
the vassal, to be faithful. A third ingredient was supplied by
the grants of immunity by which in the Frank empire, as in
England, the possession of land was united with the right of
judicature; the dwellers on a feudal property were placed under
the tribunal of the lord, and the rights which had belonged to
the nation or to its chosen head were devolved upon the receiver
of a fief. The rapid spread of the system thus originated, and
the assimilation of all other tenures to it, may be regarded as
the work of the tenth century; but as early as A.D. 877 Charles
the Bald recognized the hereditary character of all benefices;
and from that year the growth of strictly feudal jurisprudence
may be held to date.

The system testifies to the country and causes of its birth.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM 3

The beneficium is partly of Roman, partly of German origin;
in the Roman system the usufruct — the occupation of land
belonging to another person — involved no diminution of
status; in the Germanic system he who tilled land that was
not his own was imperfectly free; the reduction of a large
Roman population to dependence placed the two classes on a
level, and conduced to the wide extension of the institution.

Commendation, on the other hand, may have had a Gallic
or Celtic origin, and an analogy only with the Roman client-
ship. The German comitatus, which seems to have ultimately
merged its existence in one or other of these developments, is
of course to be carefully distinguished in its origin from them.
The tie of the benefice or of commendation could be formed
between any two persons whatever; none but the king could
have antrustions. But the comitatus of Anglo-Saxon history
preserved a more distinct existence, and this perhaps was one
of the causes that distinguished the later Anglo-Saxon system
most definitely from the feudalism of the Frank empire.

The process by which the machinery of government be-
came feudalized, although rapid, was gradual.

The weakness of the Carlovingian kings and emperors gave
room for the speedy development of disruptive tendencies in a
territory so extensive and so little consolidated. The duchies
and counties of the eighth and ninth centuries were still official
magistracies, the holders of which discharged the functions of
imperial judges or generals. Such officers were of course men
whom the kings could trust, in most cases Franks, courtiers or
kinsmen, who at an earlier date would have been comites or
antrustions, and who were provided for by feudal benefices.
The official magistracy had in itself the tendency to become
hereditary, and when the benefice was recognized as heritable,
the provincial governorship became so too. But the provincial
governor had many opportunities of improving his position,
especially if he could identify himself with the manners and
aspirations of the people he ruled. By marriage or inheritance
he might accumulate in his family not only the old allodial
estates which, especially on German soil, still continued to
subsist, but the traditions and local loyalties which were con-
nected with the possession of them. So in a few years the Frank

4 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM

magistrate could unite in his own person the beneficiary endow-
ment, the imperial deputation, and the headship of the nation
over which he presided. And then it was only necessary for
the central power to be a little weakened, and the independence
of duke or count was limited by his homage and fealty alone,
that is, by obligations that depended on conscience only for
their fulfilment.

It is in Germany that the disruptive tendency most dis-
tinctly takes the political form; Saxony and Bavaria assert their
national independence under Swabian and Saxon dukes who
have identified the interests of their subjects with their own.
In France, where the ancient tribal divisions had been long
obsolete, and where the existence of the allod involved little or
no feeling of loyalty, the process was simpler still; the provin-
cial rulers aimed at practical rather than political sovereignty;
the people were too weak to have any aspirations at all. The
disruption was due more to the abeyance of central attraction
than to any centrifugal force existing hi the provinces. But
the result was the same; feudal government, a graduated
system of jurisdiction based on land tenure, in which every
lord judged, taxed, and commanded the class next below him,
of which abject slavery formed the lowest, and irresponsible
tyranny the highest grade, and private war, private coinage,
private prisons, took the place of the imperial institutions of
government.

This was the social system which William the Conqueror
and his barons had been accustomed to see at work in France.
One part of it — the feudal tenure of land — was perhaps the
only kind of tenure which they could understand; the king was
the original lord, and every title issued mediately or immedi-
ately from him. The other part, the governmental system of
feudalism, was the point on which sooner or later the duke and
his barons were sure to differ. Already the incompatibility of
the system with the existence of the strong central power had
been exemplified in Normandy, where the strength of the dukes
had been tasked to maintain their hold on the castles and to
enforce their own high justice. Much more difficult would
England be to retain in Norman hands if the new king allowed
himself to be fettered by the French system.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM 5

On the other hand the Norman barons would fain rise a
step in the social scale answering to that by which their duke
had become a king; and they aspired to the same independence
which they had seen enjoyed by the counts of Southern and
Eastern France. Nor was the aspiration on their part alto-
gether unreasonable; they had joined in the Conquest rather as
sharers in the great adventure than as mere vassals of the duke,
whose birth they despised as much as they feared his strength.
William, however, was wise and wary as well as strong. While,
by the insensible process of custom, or rather by the mere assump-
tion that feudal tenure of land was the only lawful and reason-
able one, the Frankish system of tenure was substituted for the
Anglo-Saxon, the organization of government on the same
basis was not equally a matter of course.

The Conqueror himself was too strong to suffer that organ-
ization to become formidable in his reign, but neither the brutal
force of William Rufus nor the heavy and equal pressure of
the government of Henry I could extinguish the tendency
toward it. It was only after it had, under Stephen, broken
out into anarchy and plunged the whole nation in misery;
when the great houses founded by the barons of the Conquest
had suffered forfeiture or extinction; when the Normans had
become Englishmen under the legal and constitutional reforms
of Henry II — that the royal authority, in close alliance with the
nation, was enabled to put an end to the evil.

William the Conqueror claimed the crown of England as
the chosen heir of Edward the Confessor. It was a claim
which the English did not admit, and of which the Normans
saw the fallacy, but which he himself consistently maintained
and did his best to justify. In that claim he saw not only the
justification of the Conquest in the eyes of the church, but his
great safeguard against the jealous and aggressive host by
whose aid he had realized it; therefore, immediately after the
battle of Hastings he proceeded to seek the national recognition
of its validity. He obtained it from the divided and dismayed
wiian with no great trouble, and was crowned by the archbishop
of York — the most influential and patriotic among them —
binding himself by the constitutional promises of justice and
good laws. Standing before the altar at Westminster, "in the

6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM

presence of the clergy and people he promised with an oath that
he would defend God's holy churches and their rulers; that he
would, moreover, rule the whole people subject to him with
righteousness and royal providence; would enact and hold fast
right law and utterly forbid rapine and unrighteous judg-
ments." The form of election and acceptance was regularly
observed and the legal position of the new King completed
before he went forth to finish the Conquest.

Had it not been for this the Norman host might have fairly
claimed a division of the land such as the Danes had made in
the ninth century. But to the people who had recognized
William it was but just that the chance should be given them
of retaining what was their own. Accordingly, when the lands
of all those who had fought for Harold were confiscated, those
who were willing to acknowledge William were allowed to
redeem theirs, either paying money at once or giving hostages
for the payment. That under this redemption lay the idea of
a new title to the lands redeemed may be regarded as question-
able. The feudal lawyer might take one view, and the plun-
dered proprietor another. But if charters of confirmation or
regrant were generally issued on the occasion to those who were
willing to redeem, there can be no doubt that, as soon as the
feudal law gained general acceptance, these would be regarded
as conveying a feudal title. What to the English might be a
mere payment of jyrdwite, or composition for a recognized of-
fence, might to the Normans seem equivalent to forfeiture and
restoration.

But however this was, the process of confiscation and redis-
tribution of lands under the new title began from the moment
of the coronation. The next few years, occupied in the reduc-
tion of Western and Northern England, added largely to the
stock of divisible estates. The tyranny of Odo of Bayeux and
William Fitzosbern, which provoked attempts at rebellion in
1067; the stand made by the house of Godwin in Devonshire
in 1068; the attempts of Mercia and Northumbria to shake off
the Normans in 1069 and 1070; the last struggle for independ-
ence in 1071, in which Edwin and Morcar finally fell; the
conspiracy of the Norman earls in 1074, in consequence of
which Waltheof perished — all tended to the same result.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM 7

After each effort the royal hand was laid on more heavily;
more arid more land changed owners, and with the change of
owners the title changed. The complicated and unintelligible
irregularities of the Anglo-Saxon tenures were exchanged for
the simple and uniform feudal theory. The fifteen hundred
tenants-in-chief of Domesday Book take the place of the count-
less land-owners of King Edward's time, and the loose, unsys-
tematic arrangements which had grown up in the confusion of
title, tenure, and jurisdiction were replaced by systematic custom.
The change was effected without any legislative act, simply by
the process of transfer under circumstances in which simplicity
and uniformity were an absolute necessity. It was not the
change from allodial to feudal so much as from confusion to
order. The actual amount of dispossession was no doubt
greatest in the higher ranks; the smaller owners may to a large
extent have remained in a mediatized position on their estates;
but even Domesday, with all its fulness and accuracy, cannot
be supposed to enumerate all the changes of the twenty event-
ful years that followed the battle of Hastings. It is enough for
our purpose to ascertain that a universal assimilation of title
followed the general changes of ownership. The king of
Domesday is the supreme landlord; [all the land of the nation,
the old folkland, has become the king's; and all private land is
held mediately or immediately of him; all holders are bound
to their lords by homage and fealty, either actually demanded
or understood to be demandable, in every case of transfer by
inheritance or otherwise.

The result of this process is partly legal and partly consti-
tutional or political. The legal result is the introduction of an
elaborate system of customs, tenures, rights, duties, profits, and
jurisdictions. The constitutional result is the creation of sev-
eral intermediate links between the body of the nation and the
king, in the place of or side by side with the duty of allegiance.

On the former of these points we have very insufficient
data; for we are quite in the dark as to the development of
feudal law in Normandy before the invasion, and may be rea-
sonably inclined to refer some at least of the peculiarities of
English feudal law to the leaven of the system which it super-
seded. Nor is it easy to reduce the organization described in

8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM

Domesday to strict conformity with feudal law as it appears
later, especially with the general prevalence of military tenure.

The growth of knighthood is a subject on which the greatest
obscurity prevails, and the most probable explanation of its
existence in England — the theory that it is a translation into
Norman forms of the thegnage of the Anglo-Saxon law — can
only be stated as probable.

Between the picture drawn in Domesday and the state of
affairs which the charter of Henry I was designed to remedy,
there is a difference which the short interval of time will not
account for, and which testifies to the action of some skilful
organizing hand working with neither justice nor mercy, hard-
ening and sharpening all lines and points to the perfecting of a
strong government.

It is unnecessary to recapitulate here all the points in which
the Anglo-Saxon institutions were already approaching the feu-
dal model; it may be assumed that the actual obligation of
military service was much the same in both systems, and that
even the amount of land which was bound to furnish a mounted
warrior was the same however the conformity may have been
produced. The heriot of the English earl or thegn was in
close resemblance with the relief of the Norman count or
knight. But however close the resemblance, something was
now added that made the two identical. The change of the
heriot to the relief implies a suspension of ownership, and
carries with it the custom of "livery of seisin." The heriot
was the payment of a debt from the dead man to his lord; his
son succeeded him by allodial right. The relief was paid by
the heir before he could obtain his father's lands; between
the death of the father and livery of seisin to the son the right
of the "overlord" had entered; the ownership was to a certain
extent resumed, and the succession of the heir took somewhat
of the character of a new grant. The right of wardship also
became in the same way a reentry, by the lord, on the profits of
the estate of the minor, instead of being, as before, a protection,
by the head of the kin, of the indefeasible rights of the heir,
which it was the duty of the whole community to maintain.

There can be no doubt that the military tenure — the most
prominent feature of historical feudalism — was itself intro-

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM 9

duced by the same gradual process which we have assumed in
the case of the feudal usages in general. We have no light on
the point from any original grant made by the Conqueror to a
lay follower, but judging by the grants made to the churches
we cannot suppose it probable that such gifts were made on
any expressed condition, or accepted with a distinct pledge to
provide a certain contingent of knights for the king's service.
The obligation of national defence was incumbent, as of old,
on all land-owners, and the customary service of one fully armed
man for each five hides of land was probably the rate at which
the newly endowed follower of the king would be expected to
discharge his duty. The wording of the Domesday survey does
not imply that in this respect the new military service differed
from the old; the land is marked out, not into knights' fees,
but into hides, and the number of knights to be furnished by a
particular feudatory would be ascertained by inquiring the
number of hides that he held, without apportioning the partic-
ular acres that were to support the particular knight.

It would undoubtedly be on the estates of the lay vassals
that a more definite usage would first be adopted, and knights
bound by feudal obligations to their lords receive a definite es-
tate from them. Our earliest information, however, on this
as on most points of tenure, is derived from the notices of
ecclesiastical practice. Lanfranc, we are told, turned the
drengs, the rent-paying tenants of his archiepiscopal estates,
into knights for the defence of the country; he enfeoffed a
certain number of knights who performed the military service
due from the archiepiscopal barony. This had been done before
the Domesday survey, and almost necessarily implies that a like
measure had been taken by the lay vassals. Lanfranc likewise
maintained ten knights to answer for the military service due
from the convent of Christ Church, which made over to him, in
consideration of the relief, land worth two hundred pounds
annually. The value of the knight's fee must already have
been fixed at twenty pounds a year.

In the reign of William Rufus the abbot of Ramsey ob-
tained a charter which exempted his monastery from the service
of ten knights due from it on festivals, substituting the obliga-
tion to furnish three knights to perform service on the north of

io THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM

the Thames — a proof that the lands of that house had not yet
been divided into knights' fees. In the next reign, we may
infer — from the favor granted by the King to the knights who
defended their lands per loricas (that is, by the hauberk) that
their demesne lands shall be exempt from pecuniary taxation —
that the process of definite military infeudation had largely
advanced. But it was not even yet forced on the clerical or
monastic estates. When, in 1167, the abbot of Milton, in Dor-
set, was questioned as to the number of knights' fees for which
he had to account, he replied that all the services due from his
monastery were discharged out of the demesne; but he added
that in the reign of Henry I, during a vacancy in the abbacy,
Bishop Roger, of Salisbury, had enfeoffed two knights out of the
abbey lands. He had, however, subsequently reversed the act
and had restored the lands, whose tenure had been thus altered,
to their original condition of rent-paying estate or "socage."

The very term "the new feoff ment," which was applied to
the knights' fees created between the death of Henry I and the
year in which the account preserved in the Black Book of the
exchequer was taken, proves that the process was going on for
nearly a hundred years, and that the form in which the knights'
fees appear when called on by Henry II for "scutage" was
most probably the result of a series of compositions by which
the great vassals relieved their lands from a general burden by
carving out particular estates, the holders of which performed
the services due from the whole ; it was a matter of convenience
and not of tyrannical pressure. The statement of Ordericus Vi-
talis that the Conqueror "distributed lands to his knights in
such fashion that the kingdom of England should have forever
sixty thousand knights, and furnish them at the king's com-
mand according to the occasion," must be regarded as one of
the many numerical exaggerations of the early historians. The
officers of the exchequer in the twelfth century were quite unable
to fix the number of existing knights' fees.

It cannot even be granted that a definite area of land was
necessary to constitute a knight's fee; for although at a later
period and in local computations we may find four or five hides
adopted as a basis of calculation, where the extent of the par-
ticular knight's fee is given exactly, it affords no ground for such

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM n

a conclusion. In the Liber Niger we find knights' fees of two
hides and a half, of two hides, of four, five, and six hides.
Geoffrey Ridel states that his father held one hundred and
eighty-four carucates and a virgate, for which the service of fif-
teen knights was due, but that no knights' fees had been
carved out of it, the obligation lying equally on every caru-
cate. The archbishop of York had far more knights than his
tenure required. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that
the extent of a knight's fee was determined by rent or valuation
rather than acreage, and that the common quantity was really
expressed in the twenty librates, the twenty pounds' worth of
annual value which until the reign of Edward I was the quali-
fication for knighthood.

It is most probable that no regular account of the knights'
fees was ever taken until they became liable to taxation, either
in the form of auxilium militum under Henry I, or in that of
scutage under his grandson. The facts, however, which are
here adduced, preclude the possibility of referring this portion
of the feudal innovations to the direct legislation of the Con-
queror. It may be regarded as a secondary question whether
the knighthood here referred to was completed by the investi-
ture with knightly arms and the honorable accolade. The cere-
monial of knighthood was practised by the Normans, whereas the
evidence that the English had retained the primitive practice of
investing the youthful warrior is insufficient ; yet it would be rash
to infer that so early as this, if indeed it ever was the case, every
possessor of a knight's fee received formal initiation before he
assumed his spurs. But every such analogy would make the
process of transition easier and prevent the necessity of any
general legislative act of change.

It has been maintained that a formal and definitive act,
forming the initial point of the feudalization of England, is to
be found in a clause of the laws, as they are called, of the Con-
queror; which directs that every freeman shall affirm, by cove-
nant and oath, that "he will be faithful to King William within
England and without, will join him in preserving his lands and
honor with all fidelity, and defend him against his enemies."
But this injunction is little more than the demand of the oath
of allegiance which had been taken to the Anglo-Saxon kings,

12 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM

and is here required not of every feudal dependent of the King,
but of every freeman or freeholder whatsoever.

In that famous council of Salisbury of 1086, which was
summoned immediately after the making of the Domesday
survey, we learn from the Chronicle that there came to the King
" all his witan, and all the landholders of substance in England
whose vassals soever they were, and they all submitted to him,
and became his men and swore oaths of allegiance that they
would be faithful to him against all others." In this act have
been seen the formal acceptance and date of the introduction of
feudalism, but it has a very different meaning. The oath de-
scribed is the oath of allegiance, combined with the act of hom-
age, and obtained from all land-owners, whoever their feudal
lord might be. It is a measure of precaution taken against the
disintegrating power of feudalism, providing a direct tie between
the sovereign and all freeholders which no inferior relation
existing between them and the mesne lords would justify them in
breaking. The real importance of the passage as bearing on
the date of the introduction of feudal tenure is merely that it
shows the system to have already become consolidated; all the
land-owners of the kingdom had already become, somehow or
other, vassals, either of the king or of some tenant under him.
The lesson may be learned from the fact of the Domesday
survey.

The introduction of such a system would necessarily have
effects far wider than the mere modification of the law of tenure;
it might be regarded as a means of consolidating and concen-
trating the whole machinery of government; legislation, taxa-
tion, judicature, and military defence were all capable of being
organized on the feudal principle, and might have been so had
the moral and political results been in harmony with the legal.
But its tendency when applied to governmental machinery is
disruptive. The great feature of the Conqueror's policy is his de-
feat of that tendency. Guarding against it he obtained recogni-
tion as the King of the nation and, so far as he could understand
them and the attitude of the nation allowed, he maintained
the usages of the nation. He kept up the popular institu-
tions of the hundred court and the shire court. He confirmed
the laws which had been in use in King Edward's days, with

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM 13

the additions which he himself made for the benefit, as he espe-
cially tells us, of the English.

We are told, on what seems to be the highest legal authority
of the next century, that he issued in his fourth year a commis-
sion of inquiry into the national customs, and obtained from
sworn representatives of each county a declaration of the laws
under which they wished to live. The compilation that bears
his name is very little more than a reissue of the code of Canute ;
and this proceeding helped greatly to reconcile the English
people to his rule. Although the oppressions of his later years
were far heavier than the measures taken to secure the imme-
diate success of the Conquest, all the troubles of the kingdom
after 1075, in his sons' reigns as well as in his own, proceeded
from the insubordination of the Normans, not from the at-
tempts of the English to dethrone the king. Very early they
learned that, if their interest was not the king's, at least their
enemies were his enemies; hence they are invariably found on
the royal side against the feudatories.

This accounts for the maintenance of the national force of
defence, over and above the feudal army. The jyrd of the
English, the general armament of the men of the counties and
hundreds, was not abolished at the Conquest, but subsisted
even through the reigns of William Rufus and Henry I, to be
reformed and reconstituted under Henry II; and in each reign
it gave proof of its strength and faithfulness. The witenagemoi
itself retained the ancient form, the bishops and abbots formed
a chief part of it, instead of being, as in Normandy, so insig-
nificant an element that their very participation in deliberation
has been doubted. The king sat crowned three times in the
year in the old royal towns of Westminster, Winchester, and
Gloucester, hearing the complaints of his people, and executing
such justice as his knowledge of their law and language and
his own imperious will allowed. In all this there is no vio-
lent innovation, only such gradual essential changes as twenty
eventful years of new actors and new principles must bring,
however insensibly the people themselves — passing away and
being replaced by their children — may be educated to en-
durance.

It would be wrong to impute to the Conqueror any intention

I4 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM

of deceiving the nation by maintaining its official forms while
introducing new principles and a new race of administrators.
What he saw required change he changed with a high hand.
But not the less surely did the change of administrators involve
a change of custom, both in the church and in the state. The
bishops, ealdormen, and sheriffs of English birth were replaced
by Normans; not unreasonably, perhaps, considering the neces-
sity of preserving the balance of the state. With the change of
officials came a sort of amalgamation or duplication of titles;
the ealdorman or earl became the comes or count; the sheriff
became the vicecomes; the office in each case receiving the name
of that which corresponded most closely with it in Normandy
itself. With the amalgamation of titles came an importation
of new principles and possibly new functions; for the Norman
count and viscount had not exactly the same customs as the
earls and sheriffs. And this ran up into the highest grades of
organization; the King's court of counsellors was composed of
his feudal tenants; the ownership of land was now the qualifi-
cation for the witenagemot, instead of wisdom; the earldoms
became fiefs instead of magistracies, and even the bishops had
to accept the status of barons. There was a very certain dan-
ger that the mere change of persons might bring in the whole
machinery of hereditary magistracies, and that king and people
might be edged out of the administration of justice, taxation,
and other functions of supreme or local independence.

Against this it was most important to guard; as the Con-
queror learned from the events of the first year of his reign,
when the severe rule of Odo and William Fitzosbern had pro-
voked Herefordshire. Ralph Guader, Roger Montgomery,
and Hugh of Avranches filled the places of Edwin and Morcar
and the brothers of Harold. But the conspiracy of the earls in
1074 opened William's eyes to the danger of this proceeding,
and from that time onward he governed the provinces through
sheriffs immediately dependent on himself, avoiding the for-
eign plan of appointing hereditary counts, as well as the English
custom of ruling by viceregal ealdormen. He was, however,
very sparing in giving earldoms at all, and inclined to confine the
title to those who were already counts in Normandy or in
France.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM 15

To this plan there were some marked exceptions, which may
be accounted for either on the ground that the arrangements
had been completed before the need of watchfulness was im-
pressed on the King by the treachery of the Normans, or on that
of the exigencies of national defence. In these cases he created,
or suffered the continuance of, great palatine jurisdictions;
earldoms in which the earls were endowed with the superiority
of whole counties, so that all the land-owners held feudally of
them, in which they received the whole profits of the courts and
exercised all the "regalia" or royal rights, nominated the sher-
iffs, held their own councils, and acted as independent princes
except in the owing of homage and fealty to the King. Two of
these palatinates, the earldom of Chester and the bishopric of
Durham, retained much of their character to our own days.
A third, the palatinate of Bishop Odo in Kent, if it were really a
jurisdiction of the same sort, came to an end when Odo for-
feited the confidence of his brother and nephew. A fourth,
the earldom of Shropshire, which is not commonly counted
among the palatine jurisdictions, but which possessed under the
Montgomery earls all the characteristics of such a dignity, was
confiscated after the treason of Robert of Belesme by Henry I.
These had been all founded before the conspiracy of 1074; they
were also, like the later lordships of the marches, a part of the
national defence; Chester and Shropshire kept the Welsh
marches in order, Kent was the frontier exposed to attacks from
Picardy, and Durham, the patrimony of St. Cuthbert, lay as
a sacred boundary between England and Scotland; Northum-
berland and Cumberland were still a debatable ground be-
tween the two kingdoms. Chester was held by its earls as freely
by the sword as the King held England by the crown; no lay
vassal in the county held of the King, all of the earl. In Shrop-
shire there were only five lay tenants in capite besides Roger
Montgomery; in Kent, Bishop Odo held an enormous propor-
tion of the manors, but the nature of his jurisdiction is not
very clear, and its duration is too short to make it of much
importance. If William founded any earldoms at all after
1074 (which may be doubted), he did it on a very different
scale.

The hereditary sheriffdoms he did not guard against with

16 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM

equal care. The Norman viscounties were hereditary, and
there was some risk that the English ones would become so too;
and with the worst consequences, for the English counties were
much larger than the bailiwicks of the Norman viscount, and
the authority of the sheriff, when he was relieved from the
company of the ealdorman, and was soon to lose that of the
bishop, would have no check except the direct control of the
King. If William perceived this, it was too late to prevent il
entirely; some of the sheriffdoms became hereditary, and con-
tinued to be so long after the abuse had become constitutionally
dangerous.

The independence of the greater feudatories was still fur-
ther limited by the principle, which the Conqueror seems to
have observed, of avoiding the accumulation in any one hand of
a great number of contiguous estates. The rule is not without
some important exceptions, and it may have been suggested
by the diversity of occasions on which the fiefs were bestowed,
but the result is one which William must have foreseen. An
insubordinate baron whose strength lay in twelve different
counties would have to rouse the suspicions and perhaps to
defy the arms of twelve powerful sheriffs, before he could draw
his forces to a head. In his manorial courts, scattered and
unconnected, he could set up no central tribunal, nor even force
a new custom upon his tenants, nor could he attempt oppression
on any extensive scale. By such limitation the people were
protected and the central power secured.

Yet the changes of ownership, even thus guarded, wrought
other changes. It is not to be supposed that the Norman baron,
when he had received his fief, proceeded to carve it out into
demesne and tenants' land as if he were making a new settle-
ment in an uninhabited country. He might indeed build his
castle and enclose his chase with very little respect to the rights
of his weaker neighbors, but he did not attempt any such radical
change as the legal theory of the creation of manors seems to
presume. The name "manor" is of Norman origin: but the
estate to which it was given existed, in its essential character,
long before the Conquest; it received a new name as the shire
also did, but neither the one nor the other was created by this
change. The local jurisdictions of the thegns who had grants

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM 17

of sac and soc, or who exercised judicial functions among their
free neighbors, were identical with the manorial jurisdictions of
the new owners.

It may be conjectured with great probability that in many
cases the weaker freemen, who had either willingly or under
constraint attended the courts of their great neighbors, were now,
under the general infusion of feudal principle, regarded as hold-
ing their lands of them as lords; it is not less probable that in a
great number of grants the right to suit and service from small
land-owners passed from the king to the receiver of the fief as a
matter of course; but it is certain that even before the Con-
quest such a proceeding was not uncommon; Edward the
Confessor had transferred to St. Augustine's monastery a num-
ber of allodiaries in Kent, and every such measure in the case
of a church must have had its parallel in similar grants to lay-
men. The manorial system brought in a number of new names;
and perhaps a duplication of offices. The gereja of the old
thegn, or of the ancient township, was replaced, as president of
the courts, by a Norman steward or seneschal; and the by del of
the old system by the bailiff of the new; but the gerefa and
bydel still continued to exist in a subordinate capacity as the
grave or reeve and the bedell; and when the lord's steward takes
his place in the county court, the reeve and four men of the
township are there also. The common of the township may be
treated as the lord's waste, but the townsmen do not lose their
customary share.

The changes that take place in the state have their resulting
analogies in every village, but no new England is created; new
forms displace but do not destroy the old, and old rights re-
main, although changed in title and forced into symmetry with
a new legal and pseudo-historical theory. The changes may
not seem at first sight very oppressive, but they opened the way
for oppression; the forms they had introduced tended, under
the spirit of Norman legality and feudal selfishness, to be-
come hard realities, and in the profound miseries of Stephen's
reign the people learned how completely the new theory left
them at the mercy of their lords; nor were all the reforms of
his successor more stringent or the struggles of the century
that followed a whit more impassioned than were necessary
E., VOL. v.— 2.

i8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM

to protect the English yeoman from the men who lived upon
his strength.

In attempting thus to estimate the real amount of change
introduced by the feudalism of the Conquest, many points of
further interest have been touched upon, to which it is necessary
to recur only so far as to give them their proper place in a more
general view of the reformed organization. The Norman king
is still the king of the nation. He has become the supreme
landlord ; all estates are held of him mediately or immediately,
but he still demands the allegiance of all his subjects. The
oath which he exacted at Salisbury in 1086, and which is em-
bodied in the semi-legal form already quoted, was a modifica-
tion of the oath taken to Edmund, and was intended to set the
general obligation of obedience to the king in its proper relation
to the new tie of homage and fealty by which the tenant was
bound to his lord.

All men continued to be primarily the king's men, and the
public peace to be his peace. Their lords might demand their
service to fulfil their own obligations, but the king could call
them to the fyrd, summon them to his courts, and tax them
without the intervention of their lords; and to the king they
could look for protection against all foes. Accordingly the
king could rely on the help of the bulk of the free people in all
struggles with his feudatories, and the people, finding that their
connection with their lords would be no excuse for unfaithful-
ness to the king, had a further inducement to adhere to the more
permanent institutions.

In the department of law the direct changes introduced by
the Conquest were not great. Much that is regarded as pecul-
iarly Norman was developed upon English soil, and although
originated and systematized by Norman lawyers, contained
elements which would have worked in a very different way in
Normandy. Even the vestiges of Carlovingian practice which
appear in the inquests of the Norman reigns are modified by
English usage. The great inquest of all, the Domesday sur-
vey, may owe its principle to a foreign source; the oath of the
reporters may be Norman, but the machinery that furnishes
the jurors is native; "the king's barons inquire by the oath
of the sheriff of the shire, and of all the barons and their French-

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM 19

men, and of the whole hundred, the priest, the reeve, and six
ceorls of every township."

The institution of the collective Frank pledge, which recent
writers incline to treat as a Norman innovation, is so distinctly
colored by English custom that it has been generally regarded
as purely indigenous. If it were indeed a precaution taken by
the new rulers against the avoidance of justice by the abscond-
ing or harboring of criminals, it fell with ease into the usages
and even the legal terms which had been common for other
similar purposes since the reign of Athelstan. The trial by
battle, which on clearer evidence seems to have been brought
in by the Normans, is a relic of old Teutonic jurisprudence,
the absence of which from the Anglo-Saxon courts is far more
curious than its introduction from abroad.

The organization of jurisdiction required and underwent
no great change in these respects. The Norman lord who
undertook the office of sheriff had, as we have seen, more unre-
stricted power than the sheriffs of old. He was the king's repre-
sentative in all matters judicial, military, and financial in his
shire, and had many opportunities of tyrannizing in each of
those departments: but he introduced no new machinery.
From him, or from the courts of which he was the presiding
officer, appeal lay to the king alone; but the king was often
absent from England and did not understand the language of his
subjects. In his absence the administration was intrusted to
a judiciar, a regent, or lieutenant, of the kingdom; and the
convenience being once ascertained of having a minister who
could in the whole kingdom represent the king, as the sheriff
did in the shire, the judiciar became a permanent functionary.
This, however, cannot be certainly affirmed of the reign of the
Conqueror, who, when present at Christmas, Easter, and Whit-
suntide, held great courts of justice as well as for other purposes
of state; and the legal importance of the office belongs to a later
stage. The royal court, containing the tenants-in-chief of the
crown, both lay and clerical, and entering into all the functions of
the witenagemot, was the supreme council of the nation, with
the advice and consent of which the King legislated, taxed, and
judged.

In the one authentic monument of William's jurisprudence,

20 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM

the act which removed the bishops from the secular courts and
recognized their spiritual jurisdictions, he tells us that he acts
"with the common council and counsel of the archbishops,
bishops, abbots, and all the princes of the kingdom." The
ancient summary of his laws contained in the Textus Roffensis
is entitled "What William, King of the English, with his
Princes enacted after the Conquest of England" ; and the same
form is preserved in the tradition of his confirming the ancient
laws reported to him by the representatives of the shires. The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle enumerates the classes of men who
attended his great courts: "There were with him all the great
men over all England, archbishops and bishops, abbots and
earls, thegns and knights."

The great suit between Lanfranc as Archbishop of Canter-
bury and Odo as Earl of Kent, which is perhaps the best reported
trial of the reign, was tried in the county court of Kent before
the King's representative, Gosfrid, bishop of Coutances; whose
presence and that of most of the great men of the kingdom
seem to have made it a witenagemot. The archbishop pleaded
the cause of his Church in a session of three days on Pennenden
Heath; the aged South-Saxon bishop, Ethelric, was brought
by the King's command to declare the ancient customs of the
laws; and with him several other Englishmen skilled in ancient
laws and customs. All these good and wise men supported the
archbishop's claim, and the decision was agreed on and deter-
mined by the whole county. The sentence was laid before the
King, and confirmed by him. Here we have probably a good
instance of the principle universally adopted; all the lower
machinery of the court was retained entire, but the presence of
the Norman justiciar and barons gave it an additional author-
ity, a more direct connection with the king, and the appearance
at least of a joint tribunal.

The principle of amalgamating the two laws and nationali-
ties by superimposing the better consolidated Norman super-
structure on the better consolidated English substructure, runs
through the whole policy.

The English system was strong in the cohesion of its lower
organism, the association of individuals in the township, in the
hundred, and in the shire; the Norman system was strong in

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM 21

its higher ranges, in the close relation to the Crown of the
tenants-in-chief whom the King had enriched. On the other
hand, the English system was weak in the higher organization,
and the Normans in England had hardly any subordinate
organization at all. The strongest elements of both were
brought together.

DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE

DIVISION INTO MODERN FRANCE, GERMANY,
AND ITALY

A.D. 843-911

FRANCOIS P. G. GUIZOT

The period with which the following article deals may be said to mark
the end of distinctively Frankish history. A striking mixture of races
entered into the formation of this people, and the beginnings of the great
modern nations into which the Frankish empire was divided brought
to them varied elements of strength and a diversity of constituents that
were to be commingled in new national characters and careers.

In 840 Charles the Bald became King of France, and his reign, both as
king and afterward as emperor, continued for thirty-seven years, during
which he proved himself to be lacking in those qualities which his re-
sponsibilities and the wants of his people demanded. He had great ob-
stacles to contend against ; for besides the ambitions of various districts
for separate nationality, which led to insurrections in many quarters,
Greek pirates ravaged the South, where the Saracens also wrought havoc,
while in the North and West the Northmen burned and pillaged, laying
waste a wide region and leaving many towns in ruins.

It was an age of turbulence in Europe, and the violence of predatory
invaders brought woes upon many peoples. On the east of Charles' em-
pire the Hungarians, successors of the Huns, began to threaten. In the
midst of all these distractions and dangers, assailed by enemies without
and within, Charles found it a task far beyond his abilities to construct
a state upon foundations of unity. He bore many titles and held several
crowns, but his actual dominion was narrowly restricted, and his nominal
subjects were in a state of political subdivision almost amounting to dis-
memberment. After various futile efforts during his later years to unify
his empire, Charles died from an illness which seized him in 877, on his
return to France from a fruitless campaign of subjugation and pillage in
Italy. In the subsequent division of the empire, according to the terms
of the treaty of Verdun, the several portions included Italy, the nucleus
of France, and that of the present Germany.

Already suffering from the devastating expeditions of the Norse or
Northmen, the Carlovingian empire, now weakened by division, became
an easier prey for the invaders. Emboldened by success, the Northmen

DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE 23

at length commenced to settle in the regions they invaded, no longer re-
turning, as formerly, to their northern homes in winter. Among chief-
tains of the early Norman invaders who settled in France was Hastings,
who became Count of Chartres; later came Rou, Rolf, or Rollo the
Rover, to whom Charles the Simple of France gave Normandy, whence
sprang the conquerors and rulers of England, who laid the foundation of
the English-speaking nations of to-day.

'HTHE first of Charlemagne's grand designs, the territorial
security of the Gallo-Frankish and Christian dominion,
was accomplished. In the East and the North, the Germanic
and Asiatic populations, which had so long upset it, were partly
arrested at its frontiers, partly incorporated regularly in its
midst. In the South, the Mussulman populations which, in the
eighth century, had appeared so near overwhelming it, were
powerless to deal it any heavy blow. Substantially France was
founded. But what had become of Charlemagne's second
grand design, the resuscitation of the Roman Empire at the
hands of the barbarians that had conquered it and become
Christians ?

Let us leave Louis the Debonair his traditional name, al-
though it is not an exact rendering of that which was given
him by his contemporaries. They called him Louis the Pious.
And so, indeed, he was, sincerely and even scrupulously pious;
but he was still more weak than pious, as weak in heart and
character as in mind; as destitute of ruling ideas as of strength
of will, fluctuating at the mercy of transitory impressions or
surrounding influences or positional embarrassments. The
name of D^bonnaire is suited to him; it expresses his moral
worth and his political incapacity both at once.

As king of Aquitaine in the time of Charlemagne, Louis
made himself esteemed and loved; his justice, his suavity, his
probity, and his piety were pleasing to the people, and his
weaknesses disappeared under the strong hand of his father.
When he became emperor, he began his reign by a reaction
against the excesses, real or supposed, of the preceding reign.
Charlemagne's morals were far from regular, and he troubled
himself but little about the license prevailing in his family or
his palace. At a distance, he ruled with a tight and heavy hand.
Louis established at his court, for his sisters as well as his ser-

14 DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE

vants, austere regulations. He restored to the subjugated
Saxons certain of the rights of which Charlemagne had deprived
them. He sent out everywhere his commissioners with orders
to listen to complaints and redress grievances, and to mitigate
his father's rule, which was rigorous in its application and yet
insufficient to repress disturbance, notwithstanding its preven-
tive purpose and its watchful supervision.

Almost simultaneously with his accession, Louis committed
an act more serious and compromising. He had, by his wife
Hermengarde, three sons, Lothair, Pdpin, and Louis, aged
respectively nineteen, eleven, and eight. In 817, Louis sum-
moned at Aix-la-Chapelle the general assembly of his dominions;
and there, while declaring that "neither to those who were
wisely minded nor to himself did it appear expedient to break
up, for the love he bare his sons and by the will of man, the
unity of the empire, preserved by God himself," he had resolved
to share with his eldest son, Lothair, the imperial throne. Lo-
thair was in fact crowned emperor; and his two brothers, Pe*pin
and Louis, were crowned king, "in order that they might reign,
after their father's death and under their brother and lord,
Lothair, to wit: Pe*pin, over Aquitaine and a great part of South-
ern Gaul and of Burgundy; Louis, beyond the Rhine, over
Bavaria and the divers peoples in the east of Germany." The
rest of Gaul and of Germany, as well as the kingdom of Italy,
was to belong to Lothair, Emperor and head of the Prankish
monarchy, to whom his brothers would have to repair year by
year to come to an understanding with him and receive his in-
structions. The last-named kingdom, the most considerable
of the three, remained under the direct government of Louis the
Debonair, and at the same time of his son Lothair, sharing
the title of emperor. The two other sons, Pepin and Louis,
entered, notwithstanding their childhood, upon immediate
possession, the one of Aquitaine and the other of Bavaria, under
the superior authority of their father and their brother, the joint
emperors.

Charlemagne had vigorously maintained the unity of the
empire, for all that he had delegated to two of his sons, Pe"pin
and Louis, the government of Italy and Aquitaine with the title
of king. Louis the Debonair, while regulating beforehand

DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE 25

the division of his dominion, likewise desired, as he said, to
maintain the unity of the empire. But he forgot that he was
no Charlemagne.

It was not long before numerous mournful experiences
showed to what extent the unity of the empire required personal
superiority in the emperor, and how rapid would be the decay
of the fabric when there remained nothing but the title of the
founder.

In 816 Pope Stephen IV came to France to consecrate Louis
the Debonair emperor. Many a time already the popes had
rendered the Prankish kings this service and honor. The
Franks had been proud to see their King, Charlemagne, pro-
tecting Adrian I against the Lombards; then crowned emperor
at Rome by Leo III, and then having his two sons, Pepin and
Louis, crowned at Rome, by the same Pope, kings respectively
of Italy and of Aquitaine. On these different occasions Charle-
magne, while testifying the most profound respect for the Pope,
had, in his relations with him, always taken care to preserve,
together with his political greatness, all his personal dignity.
But when, in 816, the Franks saw Louis the Pious not only go
out of Rheims to meet Stephen IV, but prostrate himself, from
head to foot, and rise only when the Pope held out a hand to
him, the spectators felt saddened and humiliated at the sight of
their Emperor in the posture of a penitent monk.

Several insurrections burst out in the empire; the first
among the Basques of Aquitaine; the next in Italy, where
Bernard, son of Pepin, having, after his father's death, become
king in 812, with the consent of his grandfather Charlemagne,
could not quietly see his kingdom pass into the hands of his
cousin Lothair at the orders of his uncle Louis. These two
attempts were easily repressed, but the third was more serious.
It took place in Brittany among those populations of Armorica
who were still buried in their woods, and were excessively jeal-
ous of their independence. In 818 they took for king one of
their principal chieftains, named Morvan; and, not confining
themselves to a refusal of all tribute to the King of the Franks,
they renewed their ravages upon the Prankish territories border-
ing on their frontier. Louis was at that time holding a general
assembly of his dominions at Aix-la-Chapelle; and Count Lant-

26 DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE

bert, commandant of the marches of Brittany, came and reported
to him what was going on. A Prankish monk, named Ditcar,
happened to be at the assembly : he was a man of piety and sense,
a friend of peace, and, moreover, with some knowledge of the
Breton king Morvan, as his monastery had property in the
neighborhood. Him the Emperor commissioned to convey to
the King his grievances and his demands. After some days'
journey the monk passed the frontier and arrived at a vast space
enclosed on one side by a noble river, and on all the others by
forests and swamps, hedges and ditches. In the middle of this
space was a large dwelling, which was Morvan's. Ditcar found
it full of warriors, the King having, no doubt, some expedition
on hand. The monk announced himself as a messenger from
the Emperor of the Franks. The style of announcement caused
some confusion at first, to the Briton, who, however, hastened to
conceal his emotion under an air of good-will and joyousness, to
impose upon his comrades. The latter were got rid of; and the
King remained alone with the monk, who explained the object
of his mission. He descanted upon the power of the emperor
Louis, recounted his complaints, and warned the Briton, kindly
and in a private capacity, of the danger of his situation, a danger
so much the greater in that he and his people would meet with
the less consideration, seeing that they kept up the religion of
their pagan forefathers. Morvan gave attentive ear to this
sermon, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and his foot tapping
it from time to time. Ditcar thought he had succeeded; but
an incident supervened. It was the hour when Morvan's wife
was accustomed to come and look for him ere they retired to
the nuptial couch. She appeared, eager to know who the
stranger was, what he had come for, what he had said, what
answer he had received. She preluded her questions with
oglings and caresses; she kissed the knees, the hands, the beard,
and the face of the King, testifying her desire to be alone with
him. "O King and glory of the mighty Britons, dear spouse of
mine! what tidings bringeth this stranger? Is it peace, or is
it war?"

"This stranger," answered Morvan, with a smile, "is an
envoy of the Franks; but bring he peace or bring he war is the
affair of men alone; as for thee, content thee with thy woman's

DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE 27

duties." Thereupon Ditcar, perceiving that he was countered,
said to Morvan: "Sir King, 'tis time that I return; tell me what
answer I am to take back to my sovereign."

"Leave me this night to take thought thereon," replied the
Breton chief, with a wavering air. When the morning came,
Ditcar presented himself once more to Morvan, whom he found
up, but still half drunk and full of very different sentiments
from those of the night before. It required some effort, stupe-
fied and tottering as he was with the effects of wine and the
pleasures of the night, to say to Ditcar: "Go back to thy King,
and tell him from me that my land was never his, and that I
owe him naught of tribute or submission. Let him reign over
the Franks; as for me, I reign over the Britons. If he will bring
war on me, he will find me ready to pay him back."

The monk returned to Louis the Debonair and rendered
account of his mission. War was resolved upon, and the Em-
peror collected his troops — Alemannians, Saxons, Thuringians,
Burgundians, and Aquitanians, without counting Franks or
Gallo-Romans. They began their march, moving upon Vannes;
Louis was at their head, and the Empress accompanied him,
but he left her, already ill and fatigued, at Angers. The Franks
entered the country of the Britons, searched the woods and
morasses, found no armed men in the open country, but en-
countered them in scattered and scanty companies, at the en-
trance of all the defiles, on the heights commanding pathways,
and wherever men could hide themselves and await the moment
for appearing unexpectedly. The Franks heard them, from
amid the heather and the brushwood, uttering shrill cries, to
give warning one to another or to alarm the enemy. The
Franks advanced cautiously, and at last arrived at the entrance
of the thick wood which surrounded Morvan's abode. He had
not yet set out with the pick of the warriors he had about him;
but, at the approach of the Franks, he summoned his wife and
his domestics, and said to them: "Defend ye well this house
and these woods; as for me, I am going to march forward to
collect my people; after which to return, but not without booty
and spoils." He put on his armor, took a javelin in each hand,
and mounted his horse. "Thou seest," said he to his wife,
"these javelins I brandish: I will bring them back to thee this

28 DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE

very day dyed with the blood of Franks. Farewell." Setting
out he pierced, followed by his men, through the thickness of
the forest, and advanced to meet the Franks.

The battle began. The large numbers of the Franks who
covered the ground for some distance dismayed the Britons,
and many of them fled, seeking where they might hide them-
selves. Morvan, beside himself with rage and at the head of his
most devoted followers, rushed down upon the Franks as if to
demolish them at a single stroke; and many fell beneath his
blows. He singled out a warrior of inferior grade, toward
whom he made at a gallop, and, insulting him by word of mouth,
after the ancient fashion of the Celtic warriors, cried: "Frank,
I am going to give thee my first present, a present which I have
been keeping for thee a long while, and which I hope thou wilt
bear in mind;" and launched at him a javelin which the other
received on his shield. "Proud Briton," replied the Frank, "I
have received thy present, and I am going to give thee mine."
He dug both spurs into his horse's sides and galloped down upon
Morvan, who, clad though he was in a coat of mail, fell pierced
by the thrust of a lance. The Frank had but time to dismount
and cut off his head when he fell himself, mortally wounded by
one of Morvan's young warriors, but not without having, in
his turn, dealt the other his deathblow. It spreads on all sides
that Morvan is dead; and the Franks come thronging to the
scene of the encounter. There is picked up and passed from
hand to hand a head all bloody and fearfully disfigured. Ditcar
the monk is called to see it, and to say whether it is that of
Morvan; but he has to wash the mass of disfigurement, and to
partially adjust the hair, before he can pronounce that it is really
Morvan's. There is then no more doubt; resistance is now
impossible; the widow, the family and the servants of Morvan
arrive, are brought before Louis the Debonair, accept all the
conditions imposed upon them, and the Franks withdraw with
the boast that Brittany is henceforth their tributary.

On arriving at Angers, Louis found the empress Hermen-
garde dying; and two days afterward she was dead. He had
a tender heart which was not proof against sorrow; and he
testified a desire to abdicate and turn monk. But he was dis-
suaded from his purpose; for it was easy to influence his reso-

DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE 29

lutions. A little later, he was advised to marry again, and he
yielded. Several princesses were introduced; and he chose
Judith of Bavaria, daughter of Count Welf (Guelf), a family
already powerful and in later tunes celebrated. Judith was
young, beautiful, witty, ambitious, and skilled in the art of
making the gift of pleasing subserve the passion for ruling.
Louis, during his expedition into Brittany, had just witnessed
the fatal result of a woman's empire over her husband; he was
destined himself to offer a more striking and more long-lived
example of it. In 823, he had, by his new empress Judith, a
son, whom he called Charles, and who was hereafter to be
known as Charles the Bald. This son became his mother's
ruling, if not exclusive, passion, and the source of his father's
woes. His birth could not fail to cause ill-temper and mistrust
in Louis' three sons by Hermengarde, who were already kings.
They had but a short time previously received the first proof of
their father's weakness. In 822, Louis, repenting of his severity
toward his nephew, Bernard of Italy, whose eyes he had caused
to be put out as a punishment for rebellion, and who had died in
consequence, considered himself bound to perform at Attigny,
in the church and before the people, a solemn act of penance;
which was creditable to his honesty and piety, but the details
left upon the minds of the beholders an impression unfavorable
to the Emperor's dignity and authority. In 829, during an
assembly held at Worms, he, yielding to his wife's entreaties,
and doubtless also to his own yearnings toward his youngest
son, set at naught the solemn act whereby, in 817, he had shared
his dominions among his three elder sons; and took away from
two of them, in Burgundy and Alemannia, some of the terri-
tories he had assigned to them, and gave them to the boy Charles
for his share. Lothair, Pepin, and Louis thereupon revolted.
Court rivalries were added to family differences. The Emperor
had summoned to his side a young southron, Bernard by name,
duke of Septimania and son of Count William of Toulouse,
who had gallantly fought the Saracens. He made him his chief
chamberlain and his favorite counsellor. Bernard was bold,
ambitious, vain, imperious, and restless. He removed his rivals
from court, and put in their places his own creatures. He was
accused not only of abusing the Emperor's favor, but even of

30 DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE

carrying on a guilty intrigue with the empress Judith. There
grew up against him, and, by consequence, against the Em-
peror, the Empress, and their youngest son, a powerful oppo-
sition, in which certain ecclesiastics, and, among them, Wala,
abbot of Corbie, cousin-german and but lately one of the privy
counsellors of Charlemagne, joined eagerly. Some had at heart
the unity of the empire, which Louis was breaking up more
and more; others were concerned for the spiritual interests of
the Church, which Louis, in spite of his piety and by reason of
his weakness, often permitted to be attacked. Thus strength-
ened, the conspirators considered themselves certain of success.
They had the empress Judith carried off and shut up in the
convent of St. Radegonde at Poitiers; and Louis in person came
to deliver himself up to them at Compiegne, where they were
assembled. There they passed a decree to the effect that the
power and title of emperor were transferred from Louis to
Lothair, his eldest son; that the act whereby a share of the em-
pire had but lately been assigned to Charles was annulled ; and
that the act of 817, which had regulated the partition of Louis'
dominions after his death, was once more in force. But soon
there was a burst of reaction in favor of the Emperor; Lothair's
two brothers, jealous of his late elevation, made overtures to
their father; the ecclesiastics were a little ashamed at being
mixed up in a revolt; the people felt pity for the poor, honest
Emperor; and a general assembly, meeting at Nimeguen,
abolished the acts of Compiegne, and restored to Louis his title
and his power. But it was not long before there was revolt
again, originating this time with Pepin, King of Aquitaine.
Louis fought him, and gave Aquitaine to Charles the Bald.
The alliance between the three sons of Hermengarde was at
once renewed; they raised an army; the Emperor marched
against them with his; and the two hosts met between Colmar
and Bale, in a place called le Champ rouge (" the Field of Red ").
Negotiations were set on foot; and Louis was called upon to
leave his wife Judith and his son Charles, and put himself under
the guardianship of his elder sons. He refused; but, just when
the conflict was about to commence, desertion took place in
Louis' army; most of the prelates, laics, and men-at-arms who
had accompanied him passed over to the camp of Lothair; and

DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE 31

the " Field of Red " became the " Field of Falsehood " (k Champ
du Mensonge). Louis, left almost alone, ordered his attendants
to withdraw, "being unwilling," he said, "that any one of them
should lose life or limb on his account," and surrendered to his
sons. They received him with great demonstrations of respect,
but without relinquishing the prosecution of their enterprise.
Lothair hastily collected an assembly, which proclaimed him
Emperor, with the addition of divers territories to the kingdoms
of Aquitaine and Bavaria: and, three months afterward, another
assembly, meeting at Compiegne, declared the emperor Louis
to have forfeited the crown, "for having, by his faults and in-
capacity, suffered to sink so sadly low the empire which had
been raised to grandeur and brought into unity by Charlemagne
and his predecessors." Louis submitted to this decision; him-
self read out aloud, in the Church of St. M£dard at Soissons,
but not quite unresistingly, a confession, in eight articles, of
his faults, and, laying his baldric upon the altar, stripped off
his royal robe, and received from the hands of Ebbo, archbishop
of Rheims, the gray vestment of a penitent.

Lothair considered his father dethroned for good, and
himself henceforth sole Emperor; but he was mistaken. For
years longer the scenes which have just been described kept
repeating themselves again and again; rivalries and secret plots
began once more between the three victorious brothers and
their partisans; popular feeling revived in favor of Louis; a
large portion of the clergy shared it ; several counts of Neustria
and Burgundy appeared in arms, in the name of the deposed
Emperor; and the seductive and able Judith came afresh upon
the scene, and gained over to the cause of her husband and her
son a multitude of friends. In 834, two assemblies, one meeting
at St. Denis and the other at Thionville, annulled all the acts
of the assembly of Compiegne, and for the third time put Louis
in possession of the imperial title and power. He displayed no
violence in his use of it; but he was growing more and more
irresolute and weak, when, in 838, the second of his rebellious
sons, Pe"pin, king of Aquitaine, died suddenly. Louis, ever
under the sway of Judith, speedily convoked at Worms, in 839,
once more and for the last time, a general assembly, whereat,
leaving his son Louis of Bavaria reduced to his kingdom in

32 DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE

Eastern Europe, he divided the rest of his dominions into two
nearly equal parts, separated by the course of the Meuse and
the Rhone. Between these two parts he left the choice to
Lothair, who took the eastern portion, promising at the same
time to guarantee the western portion to his younger brother
Charles. Louis the Germanic protested against this partition,
and took up arms to resist it. His father, the Emperor, set him-
self in motion toward the Rhine, to reduce him to submission;
but, on arriving close to Mayence, he caught a violent fever,
and died on the 2oth of June, 840, at the castle Ingelheim, on a
little island in the river. His last acts were a fresh proof of his
goodness toward even his rebellious sons and of his solicitude
for his last-born. He sent to Louis the Germanic his pardon,
and to Lothair the golden crown and sword, at the same time
bidding him fulfil his father's wishes on behalf of Charles and
Judith.

There is no telling whether, in the credulousness of his good
nature, Louis had, at his dying hour, any great confidence in
the appeal he made to his son Lothair, and in the impression
which would be produced on his other son, Louis of Bavaria,
by the pardon bestowed. The prayers of the dying are of little
avail against violent passions and barbaric manners. Scarcely
was Louis the Debonair dead, when Lothair was already con-
spiring against young Charles, and was in secret alliance, for
his despoilment, with Pe*pin II, the late King of Aquitaine's son,
who had taken up arms for the purpose of seizing his father's
kingdom, in the possession of which his grandfather Louis had
not been pleased to confirm him. Charles suddenly learned that
his mother Judith was on the point of being besieged in Poitiers
by the Aquitanians; and, in spite of the friendly protestations
sent to him by Lothair, it was not long before he discovered the
plot formed against him. He was not wanting in shrewdness
or energy; and, having first provided for his mother's safety,
he set about forming an alliance, in the cause of their common
interests, with his other brother, Louis the Germanic, who was
equally in danger from the ambition of Lothair. The historians
of the period do not say what negotiator was employed by
Charles on this distant and delicate mission; but several cir-
cumstances indicate that the empress Judith herself undertook

DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE 33

it; that she went in quest of the King of Bavaria; and that it
was she who, with her accustomed grace and address, determined
him to make common cause with his youngest against their
eldest brother. Divers incidents retarded for a whole year the
outburst of this family plot, and of the war of which it was the
precursor. The position of the young king Charles appeared
for some time a very bad one; but "certain chieftains," says
the historian Nithard, "faithful to his mother and to him, and
having nothing more to lose than life or limb, chose rather to
die gloriously than to betray their King." The arrival of Louis
the Germanic with his troops helped to swell the forces and
increase the confidence of Charles; and it was on the 2ist of
June, 841, exactly a year after the death of Louis the Debonair,
that the two armies, that of Lothair and Pe"pin on the one side,
and that of Charles the Bald and Louis the Germanic on the
other, stood face to face in the neighborhood of the village
of Fontenailles, six leagues from Auxerre, on the rivulet of
Audries. Never, according to such evidence as is forthcoming,
since the battle on the plains of Chalons against the Huns, and
that of Poitiers against the Saracens, had so great masses of
men been engaged. "There would be nothing untruthlike,"
says that scrupulous authority, M. Fauriel, "in putting the whole
number of combatants at three hundred thousand; and there
is nothing to show that either of the two armies was much less
numerous than the other." However that may be, the leaders
hesitated for four days to come to blows; and while they were
hesitating, the old favorite, not only of Louis the Debonair,
but also, according to several chroniclers, of the empress Judith,
held himself aloof with his troops in the vicinity, having made
equal promise of assistance to both sides, and waiting, to govern
his decision, for the prospect afforded by the first conflict. The
battle began on the 25th of June, at daybreak, and was at first
in favor of Lothair; but the troops of Charles the Bald recovered
the advantage which had been lost by those of Louis the Ger-
manic, and the action was soon nothing but a terribly simple
scene of carnage between enormous masses of men, charging
hand to hand, again and again, with a front extending over a
couple of leagues. Before midday the slaughter, the plunder,
the spoliation of the dead — all was over; the victory of Charles
E., VOL. v.— -3.

34 DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE

and Louis was complete; the victors had retired to their camp,
and there remained nothing on the field of battle but corpses in
thick heaps or a long line, according as they had fallen in the
disorder of flight or steadily fighting in their ranks. . . . "Ac-
cursed be this day!" cries Angilbert, one of Lothair's officers,
in rough Latin verse; "be it unnumbered in the return of the
year, but wiped out of all remembrance! Be it unlit by the
light of the sun! Be it without either dawn or twilight! Ac-
cursed, also, be this night, this awful night in which fell the
brave, the most expert in battle! Eye ne'er hath seen more
fearful slaughter: in streams of blood fell Christian men; the
linen vestments of the dead did whiten the champaign even as
it is whitened by the birds of autumn!"

In spite of this battle, which appeared a decisive one, Lothair
made zealous efforts to continue the struggle; he scoured the
countries wherein he hoped to find partisans; to the Saxons he
promised the unrestricted reestablishment of their pagan wor-
ship, and several of the Saxon tribes responded to his appeal.
Louis the Germanic and Charles the Bald, having information
of these preliminaries, resolved to solemnly renew their alliance
and, seven months after their victory at Fontenailles, in Febru-
ary, 842, they repaired both of them, each with his army, to
Argentaria, on the right bank of the Rhine, between Bale and
Strasburg, and there, at an open-air meeting, Louis first, ad-
dressing the chieftains about him in the German tongue, said:
" Ye all know how often, since our father's death, Lothair hath
attacked us, in order to destroy us, this my brother and me.
Having never been able, as brothers and Christians, or in any
just way, to obtain peace from him, we were constrained to
appeal to the judgment of God. Lothair was beaten and re-
tired, whither he could, with his following; for we, restrained
by paternal affection and moved with compassion for Christian
people, were unwilling to pursue them to extermination. Neither
then nor aforetime did we demand aught else save that each of
us should be maintained in his rights. But he, rebelling against
the judgment of God, ceaseth not to attack us as enemies, this
my brother and me; and he destroyeth our peoples with fire and
pillage and the sword. That is the cause which hath united us
afresh; and, as we trow that ye doubt the soundness of our

DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE 35

alliance and our fraternal union, we have resolved to bind our-
selves afresh by this oath in your presence, being led thereto
by no prompting of wicked covetousness, but only that we may
secure our common advantage in case that, by your aid, God
should cause us to obtain peace. If, then, I violate — which
God forbid — this oath that I am about to take to my brother,
I hold you all quit of submission to me and of the faith ye have
sworn to me."

Charles repeated this speech, word for word, to his own
troops, in the Romance language, in that idiom derived from a
mixture of Latin and of the tongues of ancient Gaul, and spoken,
thenceforth, with varieties of dialect and pronunciation, in
nearly all parts of Prankish Gaul. After this address, Louis
pronounced and Charles repeated after him, each in his own
tongue, the oath couched in these terms: "For the love of God,
for the Christian people and for our common weal, from this
day forth and so long as God shall grant me power and knowl-
edge, I will defend this my brother and will be an aid to him
in everything, as one ought to defend his brother, provided
that he do likewise unto me; and I will never make with Lothair
any covenant which may be, to my knowledge, to the damage
of this my brother."

When the two brothers had thus sworn, the two armies, offi-
cers and men, took, in their turn, a similar oath, going bail, in
a mass, for the engagements of their kings. Then they took
up their quarters, all of them, for some time, between Worms
and Mayence, and followed up their political proceeding with
military fetes, precursors of the knightly tournaments of the
Middle Ages. "A place of meeting was fixed," says the con-
temporary historian Nithard, "at a spot suitable for this kind of
exercises. Here were drawn up, on one side, a certain number
of combatants, Saxons, Vasconians, Australians, or Britons;
there were ranged, on the opposite side, an equal number of
warriors, and the two divisions advanced, each against the
other, as if to attack. One of them, with their bucklers at their
backs, took to flight as if to seek, in the main body, shelter
against those who were pursuing them; then suddenly, facing
about, they dashed out in pursuit of those before whom they
had just been flying. This sport lasted until the two kings.

36 DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE

appearing with all the youth of their suites, rode up at a gallop,
brandishing their spears and chasing first one lot and then the
other. It was a fine sight to see so much temper among so many
valiant folk, for, great as was the number and the mixture of
different nationalities, no one was insulted or maltreated, though
the contrary is often the case among men in small numbers and
known one to another."

After four or five months of tentative measures or of inci-
dents which taught both parties that they could not, either of
them, hope to completely destroy their opponents, the two
allied brothers received at Verdun, whither they had repaired
to concert their next movement, a messenger from Lothair,
with peaceful proposals which they were unwilling to reject.
The principal was that, with the exception of Italy, Aquitaine,
and Bavaria, to be secured without dispute to their then pos-
sessors, the Frankish empire should be divided into three por-
tions, that the arbiters elected to preside over the partition
should swear to make it as equal as possible, and that Lothair
should have his choice, with the title of emperor. About mid-
June, 842, the three brothers met on an island of the Sa6ne,
near Chalons, where they began to discuss the questions which
divided them; but it was not till more than a year after, in
August, 843, that assembling, all three of them, with their
umpires, at Verdun, they at last came to an agreement about
the partition of the Frankish empire, save the three countries
which it had been beforehand agreed to accept. Louis kept
all the provinces of Germany of which he was already in pos-
session, and received besides, on the left bank of the Rhine, the
towns of Mayence, Worms, and Spire, with the territory apper-
taining to them. Lothair, for his part, had the eastern belt of
Gaul, bounded on one side by the Rhine and the Alps, on the
other by the courses of the Meuse, the Sa6ne, and the Rhone,
starting from the confluence of the two latter rivers, and, further,
the country comprised between the Meuse and the Scheldt,
together with certain countships lying to the west of that river.
To Charles fell all the rest of Gaul: Vasconia or Biscaye, Septi-
mania, the marshes of Spain, beyond the Pyrenees; and the
other countries of Southern Gaul which had enjoyed hitherto,
under the title of the kingdom of Aquitaine, a special govern-

DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE 37

ment subordinated to the general government of the empire,
but distinct from it, lost this last remnant of their Gallo-Roman
nationality, and became integral portions of Frankish Gaul,
which fell by partition to Charles the Bald, and formed one
and the same kingdom under one and the same king.

Thus fell through and disappeared, in 843, by virtue of the
treaty of Verdun, the second of Charlemagne's grand designs,
the resuscitation of the Roman Empire by means of the Frankish
and Christian masters of Gaul. The name of emperor still re-
tained a certain value in the minds of the people, and still re-
mained an object of ambition to princes; but the empire was
completely abolished, and, in its stead, sprang up three king-
doms, independent one of another, without any necessary con-
nection or relation. One of the three was thenceforth France.

In this great event are comprehended two facts: the dis-
appearance of the empire and the formation of the three king-
doms which took its place. The first is easily explained. The
resuscitation of the Roman Empire had been a dream of am-
bition and ignorance on the part of a great man, but a barbarian.
Political unity and central, absolute power had been the essential
characteristics of that empire. They became introduced and
established, through a long succession of ages, on the ruins of
the splendid Roman Republic destroyed by its own dissensions,
under favor of the still great influence of the old Roman senate
though fallen from its high estate, and beneath the guardianship
of the Roman legions and Imperial praetorians. Not one of
these conditions, not one of these forces, was to be met with in
the Roman world reigned over by Charlemagne. The nation
of the Franks and Charlemagne himself were but of yesterday;
the new Emperor had neither ancient senate to hedge at the
same time that it obeyed him, nor old bodies of troops to sup-
port him. Political unity and absolute power were repugnant
alike to the intellectual and the social condition, to the national
manners and personal sentiments of the victorious barbarians.
The necessity of placing their conquests beyond the reach of a
new swarm of barbarians and the personal ascendency of
Charlemagne were the only things which gave his government a
momentary gleam of success in the way of unity and of factitious
despotism under the name of empire. In 814 Charlemagne had

38 DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE

made territorial security an accomplished fact; but the personal
power he had exercised disappeared with him. The new Gallo-
Frankish community recovered, under the mighty but gradual
influence of Christianity, its proper and natural course, pro-
ducing disruption into different local communities and bold
struggles for individual liberties, either one with another, or
against whosoever tried to become their master.

As for the second fact, the formation of the three kingdoms
which were the issue of the treaty of Verdun, various explana-
tions have been given of it. This distribution of certain peoples
of Western Europe into three distinct and independent groups,
Italians, Germans, and French, has been attributed at one time
to a diversity of histories and manners; at another to geograph-
ical causes and to what is called the rule of natural frontiers;
and oftener still to a spirit of nationality and to differences of
language. Let none of these causes be gainsaid; they all exer-
cised some sort of influence, but they are all incomplete in them-
selves and far too redolent of theoretical system. It is true that
Germany, France, and Italy began at that time to emerge from
the chaos into which they had been plunged by barbaric in-
vasion and the conquests of Charlemagne, and to form them-
selves into quite distinct nations; but there were, in each of
the kingdoms of Lothair, of Louis the Germanic, and of Charles
the Bald, populations widely differing in race, language, manners,
and geographical affinity, and it required many great events
and the lapse of many centuries to bring about the degree of
national unity they now possess. To say nothing touching the
agency of individual and independent forces, which is always
considerable, although so many men of intellect ignore it in
the present day, what would have happened, had any one of
the three new kings, Lothair, or Louis the Germanic, or Charles
the Bald, been a second Charlemagne, as Charlemagne had
been a second Charles Martel? Who can say that, in such a
case, the three kingdoms would have taken the form they took
in 843?

Happily or unhappily, it was not so; none of Charlemagne's
successors was capable of exercising on the events of his time,
by virtue of his brain and his own will, any notable influence.
Attempts at foreign invasion of France were renewed very

DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE 39

often and in many parts of Gallo-Frankish territory during
the whole duration of the Carlovingian dynasty, and, even
though they failed, they caused the population of the king-
dom to suffer from cruel ravages. Charlemagne, even after his
successes against the different barbaric invaders, had foreseen
the evils which would be inflicted on France by the most for-
midable and most determined of them, the Northmen, coming
by sea and landing on the coast. The most closely contem-
poraneous and most given to detail of his chroniclers, the monk
of St. Gall, tells in prolix and pompous but evidently heartfelt
and sincere terms the tale of the great Emperor's farsighted-
ness.

"Charles, who was ever astir," says he, "arrived by mere
hap and unexpectedly in a certain town of Narbonnese Gaul.
While he was at dinner and was as yet unrecognized of any,
some corsairs of the Northmen came to ply their piracies in the
very port. When their vessels were descried, they were sup-
posed to be Jewish traders according to some, African according
to others, and British in the opinion of others; but the gifted
monarch, perceiving by the build and lightness of the craft,
that they bare not merchandise but foes, said to his own folk,
' These vessels be not laden with merchandise, but manned with
cruel foes.' At these words all the Franks, in rivalry one with
another, run to their ships, but uselessly; for the Northmen,
indeed, hearing that yonder was he whom it was still their wont
to call Charles the ' Hammer, ' l feared lest all their fleet should
be taken or destroyed in the port, and they avoided, by a flight
of inconceivable rapidity, not only the glaives, but even the
eyes of those who were pursuing them.

"Pious Charles, however, a prey to well-grounded fear, rose
up from table, stationed himself at a window looking eastward,
and there remained a long while, and his eyes were filled with
tears. As none durst question him, this warlike prince explained
to the grandees who were about his person the cause of his
movement and of his tears: 'Know ye, my lieges, wherefore I
weep so bitterly ? Of a surety I fear not lest these fellows should
succeed in injuring me by their miserable piracies; but it griev-
eth me deeply that, while I live, they should have been nigh to
1 After his grandfather, Charles Martel.

40 DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE

touching at this shore, and I am a prey to violent sorrow when
I foresee what evils they will heap upon my descendants and
their people. ' "

The forecast and the dejection of Charles were not unreason-
able. It will be found that there is special mention made, in
the chronicles of the ninth and tenth centuries, of forty-seven
incursions into France of Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and
Irish pirates, all comprised under the name of Northmen; and
doubtless many other incursions of less gravity have left no
trace in history. "The Northmen," says Fauriel, "descended
from the north to the south by a sort of natural gradation or
ladder. The Scheldt was the first river by the mouth of which
they penetrated inland; the Seine was the second; the Loire
the third. The advance was threatening for the countries trav-
ersed by the Garonne; and it was in 844 that vessels freighted
with Northmen for the first time ascended this last river to a
considerable distance inland, and there took immense booty.
The following year they pillaged and burnt Saintes. In 846
they got as far as Limoges. The inhabitants, finding them-
selves unable to make head against the dauntless pirates, aban-
doned their hearths, together with all they had not time to carry
away. Encouraged by these successes the Northmen reappeared
next year upon the coasts and in the rivers of Aquitaine, and
they attempted to take Bordeaux, whence they were valorously
repulsed by the inhabitants; but in 848, having once more laid
siege to that city, they were admitted into it at night by the
Jews, who were there in great force; the city was given up to
plunder and conflagration; a portion of the people was scattered
abroad, and the rest put to the sword."

The monasteries and churches, wherein they hoped to find
treasures, were the favorite object of the Northmen's enter-
prises; in particular, they plundered, at the gates of Paris, the
abbey of St. Germain des Pr£s and that of St. Denis, whence
they carried off the abbot, who could not purchase his freedom
save by a heavy ransom. They penetrated more than once into
Paris itself, and subjected many of its quarters to contributions
or pillage. The populations grew into the habit of suffering
and fleeing; and the local lords, and even the kings, made
arrangement sometimes with the pirates either for saving the

DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE 41

royal domains from the ravages, or for having their own share
therein. In 850 Pepin, King of Aquitaine, and brother of
Charles the Bald, came to an understanding with the North-
men who had ascended the Garonne and were threatening
Toulouse. "They arrived under his guidance," says Fauriel,
"they laid siege to it, took it and plundered it, not half wise, not
hastily, as folks who feared to be surprised, but leisurely, with
all security, by virtue of a treaty of alliance with one of the kings
of the country. Throughout Aquitaine there was but one cry
of indignation against Pepin, and the popularity of Charles was
increased in proportion to all the horror inspired by the ineffable
misdeed of his adversary. Charles the Bald himself, if he did
not ally himself, as Pe'pin did, with the invaders, took scarce
any interest in the fate of the populations and scarcely more
trouble to protect them, for Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims,
wrote to him in 859: 'Many folks say that you are incessantly
repeating that it is not for you to mix yourself up with these
depredations and robberies, and that everyone has but to defend
himself as best he may.'"

In the middle and during the last half of the ninth century,
a chief of the Northmen, named Hastenc or Hastings, appeared
several times over on the coasts and in the rivers of France, with
numerous vessels and a following. He had also with him, say
the chronicles, a young Norwegian or Danish prince, Bicern,
called "Ironsides," whom he had educated, and who had pre-
ferred sharing the fortunes of his governor to living quietly with
the King, his father. After several expeditions into Western
France, Hastings became the theme of terrible and very prob-
ably fabulous stories. He extended his cruises, they say, to the
Mediterranean, and, having arrived at the coasts of Tuscany,
within sight of a city which in his ignorance he took for Rome,
he resolved to pillage it; but, not feeling strong enough to attack
it by assault, he sent to the bishop to say he was very ill, felt a
wish to become a Christian, and begged to be baptized. Some
days afterward his comrades spread a report that he was dead,
and claimed for him the honors of a solemn burial. The bishop
consented; the coffin of Hastings was carried into the church,
attended by a large number of his followers, without visible
weapons; but, in the middle of the ceremony, Hastings suddenly

42 DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE

leaped up, sword in hand, from his coffin; his followers dis-
played the weapons they had concealed, closed the doors, slew
the priests, pillaged the ecclesiastical treasures, and reembarked
before the very eyes of the stupefied population, to go and re-
sume, on the coasts of France, their incursions and their rav-
ages.

Whether they were true or false, these rumors of bold arti-
fices and distant expeditions on the part of Hastings aggravated
the dismay inspired by his appearance. He penetrated into the
interior of the country, took possession of Chartres, and appeared
before Paris, where Charles the Bald, intrenched at St. Denis,
was deliberating with his prelates and barons as to how he might
resist the Northmen or treat with them. The chronicle says
that the barons advised resistance, but that the King preferred
negotiation, and sent the abbot of St. Denis, "the which was
an exceeding wise man," to Hastings, who, "after long parley
and by reason of large gifts and promises," consented to stop
his cruisings, to become a Christian, and to settle in the countship
of Chart res, "which the King gave him as an hereditary posses-
sion, with all its appurtenances." According to other accounts,
it was only some years later, under the young king Louis III,
grandson of Charles the Bald, that Hastings was induced, either
by reverses or by payment of money, to cease from his piracies
and accept in recompense the countship of Chartres. Whatever
may have been the date, he was, it is believed, the first chieftain
of the Northmen who renounced a life of adventure and plunder,
to become, in France, a great landed proprietor and a count of
the King's.

A greater chieftain of the Northmen than Hastings was soon
to follow his example, and found Normandy in France; but
before Rolf, that is, Rollo, came and gave the name of his race
to a French province, the piratical Northmen were again to
attempt a greater blow against France and to suffer a great
reverse.

In November, 885, under the reign of Charles the Fat, after
having, for more than forty years, irregularly ravaged France,
they resolved to unite their forces in order at length to obtain
possession of Paris, whose outskirts they had so often pillaged
without having been able to enter the heart of the place. Two

DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE 43

bodies of troops were set in motion: one, under the command
of Rollo, who was already famous among his comrades, marched
on Rouen; the other went right up the course of the Seine,
under the orders of Siegfried, whom the Northmen called their
king. Rollo took Rouen, and pushed on at once for Paris.
Duke Renaud, general of the Gallo-Frankish troops, went to
encounter him on the banks of the Eure, and sent to him, to
sound his intentions, Hastings, the newly made count of Char-
tres. "Valiant warriors," said Hastings to Rollo, "whence
come ye ? What seek ye here ? What is the name of your lord
and master? Tell us this; for we be sent unto you by the King
of the Franks." "We be Danes," answered Rollo, "and all be
equally masters among us. We be come to drive out the inhab-
itants of this land, and to subject it as our own country. But
who art thou, thou who speakest so glibly?" "Ye have some-
time heard tell of one Hastings, who, issuing forth from among
you, came hither with much shipping and made desert a great
part of the kingdom of the Franks?" "Yes," said Rollo, "we
have heard tell of him; Hastings began well and ended ill."
" Will ye yield you to King Charles? " asked Hastings. "We
yield," was the answer, "to none; all that we shall take by
our arms we will keep as our right. Go and tell this, if thou
wilt, to the King, whose envoy thou boastest to be."

Hastings returned to the Gallo-Frankish army, and Rollo
prepared to march on Paris. Hastings had gone back some-
what troubled in mind. Now there was among the Franks one
Count Tetbold (Thibault), who greatly coveted the countship
of Chart res, and he said to Hastings: "Why slumberest thou
softly? Knowest thou not that King Charles doth purpose thy
death by cause of all the Christian blood that thou didst afore-
time unjustly shed ? Bethink thee of all the evil thou hast done
him, by reason whereof he purposeth to drive thee from his
land. Take heed to thyself that thou be not smitten unawares."
Hastings, dismayed, at once sold to Tetbold the town of Chartres,
and, removing all that belonged to him, departed to go and
resume, for all that appears, his old course of life.

On the 2$th of November, 885, all the forces of the North-
men formed a junction before Paris; seven hundred huge barks
covered two leagues of the Seine, bringing, it is said, more than

44 DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE

thirty thousand men. The chieftains were astonished at sight of
the new fortifications of the city, a double wall of circumvalla-
tion, the bridges crowned with towers, and in the environs the
ramparts of the abbeys of St. Denis and St. Germain solidly re-
built. Siegfried hesitated to attack a town so well defended.
He demanded to enter alone and have an interview with the
bishop, Gozlin. "Take pity on thyself and thy flock," said he
to him ; "let us pass through the city ; we will in no wise touch the
town; we will do our best to preserve, for thee and Count Eudes,
all your possessions." "This city," replied the bishop, "hath
been confided unto us by the emperor Charles, king and ruler,
under God, of the powers of the earth. He hath confided it unto
us, not that it should cause the ruin but the salvation of the
kingdom. If peradventure these walls had been confided to thy
keeping as they have been to mine, wouldst thou do as thou
biddest me?"

"If ever I do so," answered Siegfried, "may my head be
condemned to fall by the sword and serve as food to the dogs!
But if thou yield not to our prayers, so soon as the sun shall
commence his course our armies will launch upon thee their
poisoned arrows; and when the sun shall end his course, they
will give thee over to all the horrors of famine; and this will
they do from year to year."

The bishop, however, persisted, without further discussion;
being as certain of Count Eudes as he was of himself. Eudes,
who was young and but recently made Count of Paris, was the
eldest son of Robert the Strong, Count of Anjou, of the same line
as Charlemagne, and but lately slain in battle against the North-
men. Paris had for defenders two heroes, one of the Church
and the other of the empire : the faith of the Christian and the
fealty of the vassal; the conscientiousness of the priest and the
honor of the warrior.

The siege lasted thirteen months, whiles pushed vigorously
forward with eight several assaults, whiles maintained by close
investment, and with all the alternations of success and reverse,
all the intermixture of brilliant daring and obscure sufferings
that can occur when the assailants are determined and the de-
fenders devoted. Not only a contemporary but an eye-witness,
Abbo, a monk of St. Germain des Pres, has recounted the details

DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE 45

in a long poem, wherein the writer, devoid of talent, adds nothing
to the simple representation of events; it is history itself which
gives to Abbo's poem a high degree of interest. We do not
possess, in reference to these continual struggles of the Northmen
with the Gallo-Frankish populations, any other document which
is equally precise and complete, or which could make us so well
acquainted with all the incidents, all the phases of this irregular
warfare between two peoples, one without a government, the
other without a country. The bishop, Gozlin, died during the
siege. Count Eudes quitted Paris for a time to go and beg aid
of the Emperor; but the Parisians soon saw him reappear on
the heights of Montmartre with three battalions of troops, and
he reentered the town, spurring on his horse and striking right
and left with his battle-axe through the ranks of the dum-
founded besiegers. The struggle was prolonged throughout the
summer; and when, in November, 886, Charles the Fat at last
appeared before Paris, "with a large army of all nations," it was
to purchase the retreat of the Northmen at the cost of a heavy
ransom, and by allowing them to go and winter in Burgundy,
"whereof the inhabitants obeyed not the Emperor."

Some months afterward, in 887, Charles the Fat was deposed,
at a diet held on the banks of the Rhine, by the grandees of
Germanic France; and Arnulf, a natural son of Carloman, the
brother of Louis III, was proclaimed emperor in his stead. At
the same time Count Eudes, the gallant defender of Paris, was
elected King at Compiegne, and crowned by the archbishop of
Sens. Guy, Duke of Spoleto, descended from Charlemagne in
the female line, hastened to France and was declared king at
Langres by the bishop of that town, but returned with precipi-
tation to Italy, seeing no chance of maintaining himself in his
French kingship. Elsewhere Boso, Duke of Aries, became King
of Provence, and the Burgundian Count Rudolph had himself
crowned at St. Maurice, in the Valais, King of transjuran Bur-
gundy. There was still in France a legitimate Carlovingian, a
son of Louis the Stutterer, who was hereafter to become Charles
the Simple; but being only a child, he had been rejected or com-
pletely forgotten, and, in the interval that was to elapse ere his
time should arrive, kings were being made in all directions.

In the midst of this confusion the Northmen, though they

46 DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE

kept at a distance from Paris, pursued in Western France their
cruising and plundering. In Rollo they had a chieftain far
superior to his vagabond predecessors. Though he still led the
same life that they had, he displayed therein other faculties,
other inclinations, other views. In his youth he had made an
expedition to England, and had there contracted a real friend-
ship with the wise king Alfred the Great. During a campaign
in Friesland he.had taken prisoner Rainier, Count of Hainault;
and Alberade, Countess of Brabant, made a request to Rollo for
her husband's release, offering in return to set free twelve cap-
tains of the Northmen, her prisoners, and to give up all the gold
she possessed. Rollo took only half the gold, and restored to
the countess her husband. When, in 885, he became master
of Rouen, instead of devastating the city after the fashion of
his kind, he respected the buildings, had the walls repaired, and
humored the inhabitants. In spite of his violent and extor-
tionate practices where he met with obstinate resistance, there
were to be discerned in him symptoms of more noble sentiments
and of an instinctive leaning toward order, civilization, and
government. After the deposition of Charles the Fat and dur-
ing the reign of Eudes, a lively struggle was maintained between
the Frankish King and the chieftain of the Northmen, who had
neither of them forgotten their early encounters. They strove,
one against the other, with varied fortunes; Eudes succeeded
in beating the Northmen at Montfaucon, but was beaten in
Vermandois by another band, commanded, it is said, by the
veteran Hastings, sometime Count of Chartres.

Rollo, too, had his share at one time of success, at another
of reverse; but he made himself master of several important
towns, showed a disposition to treat the quiet populations gently,
and made a fresh trip to England, during which he renewed
friendly relations with her King, Athelstan, the successor of
Alfred the Great. He thus became, from day to day, more rep-
utable as well as more formidable in France, insomuch that
Eudes himself was obliged to have recourse, in dealing with
him, to negotiations and presents. When, in 898, Eudes was
dead, and Charles the Simple, at hardly nineteen years of age,
had been recognized sole King of France, the ascendency of
Rollo became such that the necessity of treating with him was

DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE 47

clear. In 911 Charles, by the advice of his councillors and,
among them, of Robert, brother of the late king Eudes, who had
himself become Count of Paris and Duke of France, sent to the
chieftain of the Northmen Franco, Archbishop of Rouen, with
orders to offer him the cession of a considerable portion of
Neustria and the hand of his young daughter Gisele, on con-
dition that he became a Christian and acknowledged himself
the King's vassal. Rollo, by the advice of his comrades, received
these overtures with a good grace and agreed to a truce for three
months, during which they might treat about peace. On the
day fixed Charles, accompanied by Duke Robert, and Rollo,
surrounded by his warriors, repaired to St. Clair-sur-Epte, on
the opposite banks of the river, and exchanged numerous mes-
sages. Charles offered Rollo Flanders, which the Northman
refused, considering it too swampy; as to the maritime portion
of Neustria he would not be contented with it; it was, he said,
covered with forests, and had become quite a stranger to the
ploughshare by reason of the Northmen's incessant incursions.
He demanded the addition of territories taken from Brittany,
and that the princes of that province, Berenger and Alan, lords,
respectively, of Redon and Dol, should take the oath of fidelity
to him. When matters had been arranged on this basis, "the
bishops told Rollo that he who received such a gift as the duchy
of Normandy was bound to kiss the King's foot. ' Never,' quoth
Rollo, ' will I bend the knee before the knees of any, and I will
kiss the foot of none.' At the solicitation of the Franks he then
ordered one of his warriors to kiss the King's foot. The North-
man, remaining bolt upright, took hold of the King's foot, raised
it to his mouth, and so made the King fall backward, which
caused great bursts of laughter and much disturbance among
the throng. Then the King and all the grandees who were about
him, prelates, abbots, dukes, and counts, swore, in the name
of the Catholic faith, that they would protect the patrician Rollo
ui his life, his members, and his folk, and would guarantee to
Aim the possession of the aforesaid land, to him and his de-
scendants forever; after which the King, well satisfied, returned
to his domains; and Rollo departed with Duke Robert for the
town of Rouen."

dignity of Charles the Simple had no reason to be well

48 DECAY OF THE PRANKISH EMPIRE

satisfied; but the great political question which, a century be-
fore, caused Charlemagne such lively anxiety was solved; the
most dangerous, the most incessantly renewed of all foreign
invasions, those of the Northmen, ceased to threaten France.
The vagabond pirates had a country to cultivate and defend;
the Northmen were becoming French.

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

A.D. 871-901

T. HUGHES J. R. GREEN

Alfred the Great was the grandson of Egbert, King of the West Sax-
ons, who during a reign of thirty-seven years consolidated in the Saxon
heptarchy the seven Teutonic kingdoms into which Anglia or England
had been divided, since the expulsion of the Britons by the Saxons about
585. In the latter part of Egbert's reign the Danish Northmen appeared
in the estuaries and rivers of England, sacking and burning the towns
along their banks. Ethelwulf who had been made King of Kent in 828,
and succeeded his father Egbert as King of Anglia in 837, was early oc-
cupied hi resisting and repelling attacks along his coasts, aad by sereral
successful pitched battles with the Danish invaders obtained compara-
tive freedom from their visits for eight years. Ethelwulf had married
Osburga, the daughter of Oslac his cup-bearer, and had a daughter and
five sons, of whom Alfred, the youngest, was born in 849. Part of Al-
fred's childhood was spent in Rome. At Compiegne and Verberie
among his playmates were Charles, the boy king of Aquitaine, and
Judith, children of the French king Charles the Bald. Judith at four-
teen years of age became Ethelwulf 's second wife, and when the old King
died two years later, to the amazement and scandal of the nation married
her stepson Ethelbald.

According to Ethelwulf's will, Ethelbald became King of Wessex,
Ethelbert, the second son, King of Kent, while Ethelred and Alfred were
to be in the line of succession to Ethelbald. Ethelbald died in 860, and
Judith returned to France, subsequently marrying Baldwin, Count of
Flanders. Ethelbert as successor joined the kingdoms of Wessex and
Kent. Alfred lived at the court of Ethelbert, and became noted for the
intelligence and studious activities which were to make his future reign
the conspicuous epoch hi English history, so brilliantly commemorated
a thousand years after his death in 901, in the millenary celebrated in
Winchester and its neighborhood in 1901.

Ethelbert died in 866 and was succeeded by Ethelred. In 868 Alfred
married Elswitha, the daughter of Ethelred Mucil of Mercia. Mean-
while the Danes had resumed their predatory excursions, and in the win-
ter of 870-871 Ethelred accompanied by Alfred attacked them at Read-
ing, but after an initial victory was repulsed. Four days later, Etheired
and Alfred with their forces were attacked on Ashdown near White
Horse Hill ; after a heavy slaughter the Danes were cut to flight The
EM VOL. v. — 4

50 CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

Danes, however, reinforced by Guthrum with new troops from over the
sea, within a fortnight resumed offensive operations, and at Merton, two
months later, Ethelred was mortally wounded. He died almost imme-
diately after the battle, and " at the age of twenty-three Alfred ascended
the throne of his fathers, which was tottering, as it seemed, to its fall."

THOMAS HUGHES

HP HE throne of the West Saxons was not an inheritance to be
desired in the year 871, when Alfred succeeded his gallant
brother. It descended on him without comment or ceremony,
as a matter of course. There was not even an assembly of the
witan to declare the succession as in ordinary times. With
Guthrum and Hinguar in their intrenched camp at the con-
fluence of the Thames and Kennet, and fresh bands of ma-
rauders sailing up the former river, and constantly swelling the
ranks of the pagan army during these summer months, there
was neither time nor heart among the wise men of the West
Saxons for strict adherence to the letter of the constitution, how-
ever venerable. The succession had already been settled by the
Great Council, when they formally accepted the provisions of
Ethelwulf's will, that his three sons should succeed, to the ex-
clusion of the children of any one of them.

The idea of strict hereditary succession has taken so strong
a hold of us English in later times that it is necessary constantly
to insist that our old English kingship was elective. Alfred's
title was based on election ; and so little was the idea of usurpa-
tion, or of any wrong done to the two infant sons of Ethelred,
connected with his accession, that even the lineal descendant
of one of those sons, in his chronicle of that eventful year, does
not pause to notice the fact that Ethelred left children. He is
writing to his "beloved cousin Matilda," to instruct her in the
things which he had received from ancient traditions, "of the
history of our race down to these two kings from whom we have
our origin." "The fourth son of Ethelwulf," he writes, "was
Ethelred, who, after the death of Ethelbert, succeeded to the
kingdom, and was also my grandfather's grandfather. The
fifth was Alfred, who succeeded after all the others to the
whole sovereignty, and was your grandfather's grandfather."
And so passes on to the next facts, without a word as to the

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 51

claims of his own lineal ancestor, though he had paused in his
narrative at this point for the special purpose of introducing a
little family episode.

When Alfred had buried his brother in the cloisters of Wim-
borne Minster, and had time to look out from his Dorsetshire
resting-place, and take stock of the immediate prospects and
work which lay before him, we can well believe that those his-
torians are right who have told us that for the moment he lost
heart and hope, and suffered himself to doubt whether God
would by his hand deliver the afflicted nation from its terrible
straits. In the eight pitched battles which we find by the
Saxon Chronicle (Asser giving seven only) had already been
fought with the pagan army, the flower of the youth of these
parts of the West Saxon kingdom must have fallen. The other
Teutonic kingdoms of the island, of which he was overlord, and
so bound to defend, had ceased to exist except in name, or lay
utterly powerless, like Mercia, awaiting their doom. Kent,
Sussex, and Surrey, which were now an integral part of the
royal inheritance of his own family, were at the mercy of his
enemies, and he without a hope of striking a blow for them.
London had been pillaged, and was in ruins. Even in Wessex
proper, Berkshire and Hampshire, with parts of Wilts and
Dorset, had been crossed and recrossed by marauding bands,
in whose track only smoking ruins and dead bodies were found.
" The land was as the garden of Eden before them, and behind
them a desolate wilderness." These bands were at this very mo-
ment on foot, striking into new districts farther to the southwest
than they had yet reached. If the rich lands of Somersetshire
and Devonshire, and the yet unplundered parts of Wilts and
Dorset, are to be saved, it must be by prompt and decisive
fighting, and it is tune for a king to be in the field. But it is a
month from his brother's death before Alfred can gather men
enough round his standard to take the field openly. Even then,
when he fights, it is "almost against his will," for his ranks are
sadly thin, and the whole pagan army are before him, at Wilton
near Salisbury. The action would seem to have been brought
on by the impetuosity of Alfred's own men, whose spirit was still
unbroken, and their confidence in their young King enthusiastic.
There was a long and fierce fight as usual, during the earlier

52 CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

part of which the Saxons had the advantage, though greatly
outnumbered.

But again we get glimpses of the old trap of a feigned flight
and ambuscade, into which they fell, and so again lose "posses-
sion of the place of death," the ultimate test of victory. "This
year," says the Saxon Chronicle, "nine general battles were
fought against the army in the kingdom south of the Thames;
besides which Alfred, the king's brother, and single aldermen
and king's thanes, oftentimes made attacks on them, which were
not counted; and within the year one king and nine jarls [earls]
were slain." Wilton was the last of these general actions, and
not long afterward, probably in the autumn, Alfred made peace
with the pagans, on condition that they should quit Wessex at
once.

They were probably allowed to carry off whatever spoils
they may have been able to accumulate in their Reading camp,
but I can find no authority for believing that Alfred fell into the
fatal and humiliating mistake of either paying them anything
or giving hostages or promising tribute. This young King,
who, as crown prince, led the West Saxons up the slopes at
Ashdown, when Bagsac, the two Sidrocs, and the rest were
killed, and who has very much their own way of fighting — go-
ing into the clash of arms "when the hard steel rings upon the
high helmets," and "the beasts of prey have ample spoil," like
a veritable child of Odin — is clearly one whom it is best to let
alone, at any rate so long as easy plunder and rich lands are to
be found elsewhere, without such poison-mad fighting for every
herd of cattle and rood of ground. Indeed, I think the careful
reader may trace from the date of Ashdown a decided unwilling-
ness on the part of the Danes to meet Alfred, except when they
could catch him at disastrous odds. They succeeded, indeed,
for a time in overrunning almost the whole of his kingdom, in
driving him an exile for a few wretched weeks to the shelter of
his own forests; but whenever he was once fairly in the field
they preferred taking refuge in strong places, and offering trea-
ties and hostages to the actual arbitrament of battle.

So the pagan army quitted Reading, and wintered in 872 in
the neighborhood of London, at which place they received pro-
posals from Buhred, King of the Mercians, Alfred's brother-in-

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 53

law, and for a money payment pass him and his people contemp-
tuously by for the time, making some kind of treaty of peace with
them, and go northward into what has now become their own
country. They winter in Lincolnshire, gathering fresh strength
during 873 from the never-failing sources of supply across the
narrow seas. Again, however, in this year of ominous rest they
renew their sham peace with poor Buhred and his Mercians,
who thus manage to tide it over another winter. In 874, how-
ever, their time has come. In the spring, the pagan army under
the three kings, Guthrum, Oskytal, and Amund, burst into
Mercia. In this one only of the English Teutonic kingdoms
they find neither fighting nor suffering hero to cross their way,
and leave behind for a thousand years the memory of a noble
end, cut out there in some half-dozen lines of an old chroni-
cler, but full of life and inspiration to this day for all English-
men. The whole country is overrun, and reduced under pagan
rule, without a blow struck, so far as we know, and within the
year.

Poor Buhred, titular King of the Mercians, who has made
believe to rule this English kingdom these twenty-two years —
who in his time has marched with his father-in-law Ethelwulf
across North Wales — has beleaguered Nottingham with his
brothers-in-law, Ethelred and Alfred, six years back, not without
show of manhood — sees for his part nothing for it under such
circumstances but to get away as swiftly as possible, as many
so-called kings have done before him, and since. The West
Saxon court is no place for him, quite other views of kingship
prevailing in those parts. So the poor Buhred breaks away
from his anchors, leaving his wife Ethelswitha even, in his
haste, to take refuge with her brother; or is it that the heart of
the daughter of the race of Cerdic swells against leaving the land
which her sires had won, the people they had planted there, in
the moment of sorest need? In any case Buhred drifts away
alone across into France, and so toward the winter to Rome.
There he dies at once — about Christmas-time, 874 — of shame
and sorrow probably, or of a broken heart as we say; at any
rate having this kingly gift left in him, that he cannot live and
look on the ruin of his people, as St. Edmund's brother Edwold
is doing in these same years, "near a clear well at Carnelia, in

54 CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

Dorsetshire," doing the hermit business there on bread and
water.

The English in Rome bury away poor Buhred, with all the
honors, in the Church of St. Mary's, to which the English schools
rebuilt by his father-in-law Ethelwulf were attached. Ethel-
switha visited, or started to visit, the tomb years later, we are
told, in 888, when Mercia had risen to new life under her great
brother's rule. Through these same months Guthrum, Oskytal,
and the rest are wintering at Repton, after destroying there the
cloister where the kingly line of Mercia lie; disturbing perhaps
the bones of the great Offa, whom Charlemagne had to treat as
an equal.

Neither of the pagan kings is inclined at this time to settle
in Mercia; so, casting about what to do with it, they light on "a
certain foolish man," a king's thane, one Ceolwulf, and set him
up as a sort of King Popinjay. From this Ceolwulf they take
hostages for the payment of yearly tribute — to be wrung out of
these poor Mercians on pain of dethronement — and for the sur-
render of the kingdom to them on whatever day they would have
it back again. Foolish king's thanes, turned into King Popin-
jays by pagans, and left to play at government on such terms, are
not pleasant or profitable objects in such times as these of one
thousand years since — or indeed in any times, for the matter of
that. So let us finish with Ceolwulf, just noting that a year or
two later his pagan lords seem to have found much of the spoil
of monasteries, and the pickings of earl and churl, of folkland
and bookland, sticking to his fingers, instead of finding its way
to their coffers. This was far from their meaning in setting
him up in the high places of Mercia. So they strip him and
thrust him out, and he dies in beggary.

This, then, is the winter's work of the great pagan army at
Repton, Alfred watching them and their work doubtless with
keen eye — not without misgivings too at their numbers, swollen
again to terrible proportions since they sailed away down Thames
after Wilton fight. It will take years yet before the gaps in the
fighting strength of Wcssex, left by those nine pitched battles,
and other smaller fights, will be filled by the crop of youths pass-
ing from childhood to manhood. An anxious thought, that, for
a young king.

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 55

The pagans, however, are not yet ready for another throw
for Wessex; and so when Mcrcia is sucked dry for the present,
and will no longer suitably maintain so great a host, they again
sever. Halfdene, who would seem to have joined them recently,
takes a large part of the army away with him northward. Set-
tling his head -quarters by the river Tyne, he subdues all the
land, and "ofttimes spoils the Picts and the Strathclyde Brit-
ons." Among other holy places in those parts, Halfdene visits
the Isle of Lindisfarne, hoping perhaps in his pagan soul not only
to commit ordinary sacrilege in the holy places there, which is
every-day work for the like of him, but even to lay impious hands
on, and to treat with indignity, the remains of that holy man
St. Cuthbert, who has become, in due course, patron and
guardian saint of hunters, and of that scourge of pagans, Alfred
the West Saxon. If such were his thoughts, he is disappointed
of his sacrilege; for Bishop Eardulf and Abbot Eadred —
devout and strenuous persons — having timely warning of his
approach, carry away the sainted body from Lindisfarne, and
for nine years hide with it up and down the distracted northern
counties, now here, now there, moving that sacred treasure from
place to place until this bitterness is overpast, and holy persons
and things, dead or living, are no longer in danger, and the
bodies of saints may rest safely in fixed shrines; the pagan
armies and disorderly persons of all kinds having been converted
or suppressed in the mean time; for which good deed the royal
Alfred — in whose calendar St. Cuthbert, patron of huntsmen,
stands very high — will surely warmly befriend them hereafter,
when he has settled his accounts with many persons and things.
From the time of this incursion of Halfdene, Northumbria may
be considered once more a settled state, but a Danish, not a
Saxon one.

The rest and greater part of the army, under Guthrum,
Oskytal, and Amund, on leaving Repton, strike southeast,
through what was "Landlord" Edmund's country, to Cam-
bridge, where, in their usual heathen way, they pass the winter
of 875.

The downfall, exile, and death of his brother-in-law in 874
must have warned Alfred, if he had any need of warning, that
no treaty could bind these foemen, and that he had nothing to

56 CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

look for but the same measure as soon as the pagan leaders felt
themselves strong enough to mete it out to him and Wessex. In
the following year we accordingly find him on the alert, and
taking action in a new direction. These heathen pirates, he
sees, fight his people at terrible advantage by reason of their
command of the sea. This enables them to choose their own
point of attack, not only along the sea-coast, but up every river
as far as their light galleys can swim; to retreat unmolested, at
their own tune, whenever the fortune of war turns against them ;
to bring reinforcements of men and supplies to the scene of
action without fear of hindrance. His Saxons have long since
given up their seafaring habits. They have become before all
things an agricultural people, drawing almost everything they
need from their own soil. The few foreign tastes they have are
supplied by foreign traders. However, if Wessex is to be made
safe the sea-kings must be met on their own element; and so,
with what expenditure of patience and money and encouraging
words and example we may easily conjecture, the young King gets
together a small fleet, and himself takes command of it. We
have no clew to the point on the south coast where the admiral
of twenty-five fights his first naval action, but know only that in
the summer of 875 he is cruising with his fleet, and meets seven
tall ships of the enemy. One of these he captures, and the rest
make off after a hard fight — no small encouragement to the
sailor King, who has thus for another year saved Saxon home-
steads from devastation by fire and sword.

The second wave of invasion had now at last gathered
weight and volume enough, and broke on the King and people
of the West Saxons.

The year 876 was still young when the whole pagan army,
which had wintered at and about Cambridge, marched to their
ships and put to sea. Guthrum was in command, with the
other two kings, Anketel and Amund, as his lieutenants, under
whom was a host as formidable as that which had marched
across Mercia through forest and waste, and sailed up the
Thames five years before to the assault of Reading. There
must have been some few days of harassing suspense, for we
cannot suppose that Alfred was not aware of the movements of
his terrible foes. Probably his new fleet cruised off the south

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 57

coast on the watch for them, and all up the Thames there were
gloomy watchings and forebodings of a repetition of the evil
days of 871. But the suspense was soon over. Passing by
the Thames' mouth, and through Dover Straits, the pagan fleet
sailed, and westward still past many tempting harbors and
rivers' mouths, until they came off the coast of Dorsetshire.
There they land at Wareham, and seize and fortify the neck of
land between the rivers Frome and Piddle, on which stood,
when they landed, a fortress of the West Saxons and a monas-
tery of holy virgins. Fortress and monastery fell into the hands
of the Danes, who set to work at once to throw up earthworks
and otherwise fortify a space large enough to contain their
army, and all spoil brought in by marauding bands from this
hitherto unplundered country. This fortified camp was soon
very strong, except on the western side, upon which Alfred
shortly appeared with a body of horsemen and such other
troops as could be gathered hastily together. The detachment
of the pagans, who were already out pillaging the whole neigh-
borhood, fell back apparently before him, concentrating on the
Wareham camp. Before its outworks Alfred paused. He is
too experienced a soldier now to risk at the outset of a campaign
such a disaster as that which he and Ethelred had sustained in
their attempt to assault the camp at Reading in 871. He is
just strong enough to keep the pagans within their lines, but
has no margin to spare. So he sits down before the camp, but
no battle is fought, neither he nor Guthrum caring to bring
matters to that issue. Soon negotiations are commenced, and
again a treaty is made.

On this occasion Alfred would seem to have taken special
pains to bind his faithless foe. All the holy relics which could
be procured from holy places in the neighborhood were brought
together, that he himself and his people might set the example
of pledging themselves in the most solemn manner known to
Christian men. Then a holy ring or bracelet, smeared with
the blood of beasts sacrificed to Woden, was placed on a heathen
altar. Upon this Guthrum and his fellow kings and earls swore
on behalf of the army that they would quit the King's country
and give hostages. Such an oath had never been sworn by
Danish leader on English soil before. It was the most solemn

58 CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

known to them. They would seem also to have sworn on
Alfred's relics, as an extra proof of their sincerity for this once,
and their hostages "from among the most renowned men in
the army" were duly handed over. Alfred now relaxed his
watch, even if he did not withdraw with the main body of his
army, leaving his horse to see that the terms of the treaty were
performed, and to watch the Wareham camp until the departure
of the pagan host. But neither oath on sacred ring, nor the risk
to their hostages, weighed with Guthrum and his followers
when any advantage was to be gained by treachery. They steal
out of the camp by night, surprise and murder the Saxon horse-
men, seize the horses, and strike across the country, the mounted
men leading, to Exeter, but leaving a sufficient garrison to hold
Wareham for the present. They surprise and get possession of
the western capital, and there settle down to pass the winter.
Rollo, fiercest of the vikings, is said by Asser to have passed the
winter with them in their Exeter quarters on his way to Nor-
mandy; but whether the great robber himself were here or not,
it is certain that the channel swarmed with pirate fleets, who
could put in to Wareham or Exeter at their discretion, and find
a safe stronghold in either place from which to carry fire and
sword through the unhappy country.

Alfred had vainly endeavored to overtake the march to Exe-
ter in the autumn of 876, and, failing in the pursuit, had dis-
banded his own troops as usual, allowing them to go to their own
homes until the spring. Before he could be afoot again in the
spring of 877 the main body of the pagans at Exeter had made
that city too strong for any attempt at assault, so the King and
his troops could do no more than beleaguer it on the land side,
as he had done at Wareham. But Guthrum could laugh at all
efforts of his great antagonist, and wait in confidence the sure
disbanding of the Saxon troops at harvest time, so long as his
ships held the sea.

Supplies were running short in Exeter, but the Exe was
open and communications going on with Wareham. It is
arranged that the camp there shall be broken up, and the whole
garrison with their spoil shall join head-quarters. One hun-
dred and twenty Danish war-galleys are freighted, and beat
down channel, but are baffled by adverse winds for nearly a

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 59

month. They and all their supplies may be looked for any day
in the Exe when the wind changes. Alfred, from his camp
before Exeter, sends to his little fleet to put to sea. He cannot
himself be with them as in their first action, for he knows well
that Guthrum will seize the first moment of his absence to sally
from Exeter, break the Saxon lines, and scatter his army in
roving bands over Devonshire, on their way back to the eastern
kingdom. The Saxon fleet puts out, manned itself, as some
say, partly with sea-robbers, hired to fight their own people.
However manned, it attacks bravely a portion of the pirates.
But a mightier power than the fleet fought for Alfred at this
crisis. First a dense fog and then a great storm came on,
bursting on the south coast with such fury that the pagans lost
no less than one hundred of their chief ships off Swanage, as
mighty a deliverance perhaps for England — though the mem-
ory of it is nearly forgotten — as that which began in the same
seas seven hundred years later, when Drake and the sea-kings
of the sixteenth century were hanging on the rear of the Span-
ish armada along the Devon and Dorset coasts, while the bea-
cons blazed up all over England and the whole nation flew to
arms.

The destruction of the fleet decided the fate of the siege of
Exeter. Once more negotiations are opened by the pagans;
once more Alfred, fearful of driving them to extremities, listens,
treats, and finally accepts oaths and more hostages, acknowl-
edging probably in sorrow to himself that he can for the mo-
ment do no better. And on this occasion Guthrum, being
caught far from home, and without supplies or ships, "keeps
the peace well," moving as we conjecture, watched jealously by
Alfred, on the shortest line across Devon and Somerset to some
ford in the Avon, and so across into Mercia, where he arrives
during harvest, and billets his army on Ceolwulf, camping them
for the winter about the city of Gloster. Here they run up huts
for themselves, and make some pretense of permanent settle-
ment on the Severn, dividing large tracts of land among those
who cared to take them.

The campaigns of 876-77 are generally looked upon as dis-
astrous ones for the Saxon arms, but this view is certainly not
supported by the chroniclers. It is true that both at Wareham

6o

and Exeter the pagans broke new ground, and secured their po-
sition, from which no doubt they did sore damage in the neigh-
boring districts, but we can trace in these years none of the old
ostentatious daring and thirst for battle with Alfred. When-
ever he appears the pirate bands draw back at once into their
strongholds, and, exhausted as great part of Wessex must have
been by the constant strain, the West Saxons show no signs yet
of falling from their gallant King. If he can no longer collect
in a week such an army as fought at Ashdown, he can still,
without much delay, bring to his side a sufficient force to hern
the pagans in and keep them behind their ramparts.

But the nature of the service was telling sadly on the resources
of the kingdom south of the Thames. To the Saxons there
came no new levies, while from the north and east of England,
as well as from over the sea, Guthrum was ever drawing to his
standard wandering bands of sturdy Northmen. The most
important of these reinforcements came to him from an unex-
pected quarter this autumn. We have not heard for some years
of Hubba, the brother of Hinguar, the younger of the two vi-
kings who planned and led the first great invasion in 868. Per-
haps he may have resented the arrival of Guthrum and other
kings in the following years, to whom he had to give place.
Whatever may have been the cause, he seems to have gone off
on his own account: carrying with him the famous raven
standard, to do his appointed work in these years on other
coasts under its ominous shade.

This "war flag which they call raven" was a sacred object
to the Northmen. When Hinguar and Hubba had heard of
the death of their father, Regnar Lodbrog, and had resolved to
avenge him, while they were calling together their followers,
their three sisters in one day wove for them this war-flag, in the
midst of which was portrayed the figure of a raven. Whenever
the flag went before them into battle, if they were to win the day
the sacred raven would rouse itself and stretch its wings; but if
defeat awaited them, the flag would hang round its staff and
the bird remain motionless. This wonder had been proved in
many a fight, so the wild pagans who fought under the standard
of Regnar's children believed. It was a power in itself, and
Hubba and a strong fleet were with it.

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 61

They had appeared in the Bristol Channel in this autumn of
877, and had ruthlessly slaughtered and spoiled the people of
South Wales. Here they propose to winter; but, as the country
is wild mountain for the most part, and the people very poor,
they will remain no longer than they can help. Already a large
part of the army about Gloster are getting restless. The story
of their march from Devonshire, through rich districts of Wes-
sex yet unplundered, goes round among the new-comers.
Guthrum has no power, probably no will, to keep them to their
oaths. In the early winter a joint attack is planned by him and
Hubba on the West Saxon territory. By Christmas they are
strong enough to take the field, and so in midwinter, shortly
after Twelfth Night, the camp at Gloster breaks up, and the
army "stole away to Chippenham," recrossing the Avon once
more into Wessex, under Guthrum. The fleet, after a short
delay, crosses to the Devonshire coast, under Hubba, in thirty
war-ships.

And now at last the courage of the West Saxons gives way.
The surprise is complete. Wiltshire is at the mercy of the pa-
gans, who, occupying the royal burgh of Chippenham as head-
quarters, overrun the whole district, drive many of the inhab-
itants "beyond the sea for want of the necessaries of life," and
reduce to subjection all those that remain. Alfred is at his post,
but for the moment can make no head against them. His own
strong heart and trust in God are left him, and with them and a
scanty band of followers he disappears into the forest of Sel-
wood, which then stretched away from the confines of Wiltshire
for thirty miles to the west. East Somerset, now one of the
fairest and richest of English counties, was then for the most
part thick wood and tangled swamp, but miserable as the lodg-
ing is it is welcome for the time to the Bang. In the first
months of 878 Selwood Forest holds in its recesses the hope of
England.

It is at this point, as is natural enough, that romance has
been most busy, and it has become impossible to disentangle the
actual facts from monkish legend and Saxon ballad. In hap-
pier times Alfred was in the habit himself of talking over the
events of his wandering life pleasantly with his courtiers, and
there is no reason to doubt that the foundation of most of the

62 CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

stories still current rests on those conversations of the truth-
loving King, noted down by Bishop Asser and others.

The best known of these is, of course, the story of the cakes.
In the depths of the Saxon forests there were always a few
neatherds and swineherds, scattered up and down, living in
rough huts enough, we may be sure, and occupied with the care
of the cattle and herds of their masters. Among these in Sel-
wood was a neatherd of the King, a faithful man, to whom the
secret of Alfred's disguise was intrusted, and who kept it even
from his wife. To this man's hut the King came one day alone,
and, sitting himself down by the burning logs on the hearth,
began mending his bow and arrows. The neatherd's wife had
just finished her baking, and having other household matters to
attend to, confided her loaves to the King, a poor tired-looking
body, who might be glad of the warmth, and could make him-
self useful by turning the batch, and so earn his share while she
got on with other business. But Alfred worked away at his
weapons, thinking of anything but the good housewife's batch
of loaves, which in due course were not only done, but rapidly
burning to a cinder. At this moment the neatherd's wife
comes back, and flying to the hearth to rescue the bread, cries
out: "Drat the man! never to turn the loaves when you see
them burning. I'ze warrant you ready enough to cat them
when they are done." But besides the King's faithful neatherd,
whose name is not preserved, there are other churls in the for-
est, who must be Alfred's comrades just now if he will have
any. And even here he has an eye for a good man, and will
lose no opportunity to help one to the best of his power.
Such a one he finds in a certain swineherd called Denewulf,
whom he gets to know, a thoughtful Saxon man, minding his
charge there in the oak woods. The rough churl, or thrall, we
know not which, has great capacity, as Alfred soon finds out,
and desire to learn. So the King goes to work upon Denewulf
under the oak trees, when the swine will let him, and is well
satisfied with the results of his teaching and the progress of his
pupil.

But in those miserable days the commonest necessaries of
life were hard enough to come by for the King and his few com-
panions, and for his wife and family, who soon joined him in the

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 63

forest, even if they were not with him from the first. The poor
foresters cannot maintain them, nor are this band of exiles the
men to live on the poor. So Alfred and his comrades are soop
out foraging on the borders of the forest, and getting what sub-
sistence they can from the pagans, or from the Christians who had
submitted to their yoke. So we may imagine them dragging on
life till near Easter, when a gleam of good news comes up from
the west, to gladden the hearts and strengthen the arms of these
poor men in the depths of Selwood.

Soon after Guthrum and the main body of the pagans
moved from Gloster, southward, the viking Hubba, as had been
agreed, sailed with thirty ships-of-war from his winter quarters
on the South Welsh coast, and landed in Devon. The news of
the catastrophe at Chippenham, and of the disappearance of
the King, was no doubt already known in the West; and in the
face of it Odda the alderman cannot gather strength to meet
the pagan in the open field. But he is a brave and true man,
and will make no terms with the spoilers; so, with other faith-
ful thanes of King Alfred and their followers, he throws himself
into a castle or fort called Cynwith, or Cynuit, there to abide
whatever issue of this business God shall send them. Hubba,
with the war-flag Raven, and a host laden with the spoil of rich
Devon vales, appear in due course before the place. It is not
strong naturally, and has only "walls in our own fashion,"
meaning probably rough earthworks. But there are resolute
men behind them, and on the whole Hubba declines the assault,
and sits down before the place. There is no spring of water,
he hears, within the Saxon lines, and they are otherwise wholly
unprepared for a siege. A few days will no doubt settle the
matter, and the sword or slavery will be the portion of Odda
and the rest of Alfred's men; meantime there is spoil enough in
the camp from Devonshire homesteads, which brave men can
revel in round the war-flag Raven, while they watch the Saxon
ramparts. Odda, however, has quite other views than death
from thirst, or surrender. Before any stress comes, early one
morning he and his whole force sally out over their earthworks,
and from the first "cut down the pagans in great numbers":
eight hundred and forty warriors — some say twelve hundred —
with Hubba himself are slain before Cynuit fort; the rest, few

64 CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

in number, escape to their ships. The war-flag Raven is left
in the hands of Odda and the men of Devon.

This is the news which comes to Alfred, Ethelnoth the alder-
man of Somerset, Denewulf the swineherd, and the rest of the
Selwood Forest group, some time before Easter. These men of
Devonshire, it seems, are still stanch, and ready to peril their
lives against the pagan. No doubt up and down Wessex,
thrashed and trodden out as the nation is by this time, there are
other good men and true, who will neither cross the sea nor the
Welsh marches nor make terms with the pagan; some sprin-
kling of men who will yet set life at stake, for faith in Christ and
love of England. If these can only be rallied, who can say
what may follow? So, in the lengthening days of spring,
council is held in Selwood, and there will have been Easter
services in some chapel or hermitage in the forest, or, at any
rate, in some quiet glade. The "day of days" will surely have
had its voice of hope for this poor remnant. Christ is risen and
reigns; and it is not in these heathen Danes, or in all the North-
men who ever sailed across the sea, to put back his kingdom or
to enslave those whom he has freed.

The result is that, far away from the eastern boundary of
the forest, on a rising ground — hill it can scarcely be called —
surrounded by dangerous marshes formed by the little rivers
Thone and Parret, fordable only in summer, and even then
dangerous to all who have not the secret, a small fortified camp
is thrown up under Alfred's eye, by Ethelnoth and the Somerset-
shire men, where he can once again raise his standard. The
spot has been chosen by the King with the utmost care, for it is
his last throw. He names it the Etheling's eig or island, " Athel-
ney." Probably his young son, the Etheling of England, is
there among the first, with his mother and his grandmother
Eadburgha, the widow of Ethelred Mucil, the venerable lady
whom Asser saw in later years, and who has now no country
but her daughter's. There are, as has been reckoned, some
two acres of hard ground on the island, and around vast brakes
of alder-bush, full of deer and other game.

Here the Somersetshire men can keep up constant commu-
nication with him, and a small army grows together. They
are soon strong enough to make forays into the open country,

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 65

and in many skirmishes they cut off parties of the pagans and
supplies. "For, even when overthrown and cast down," says
Malmesbury, "Alfred had always to be fought with; so, then
when one would esteem him altogether worn down and broken,
like a snake slipping from the hand of him who would grasp it,
he would suddenly flash out again from his hiding-places,
rising up to smite his foes in the height of their insolent confi-
dence, and never more hard to beat than after a flight."

But it was still a trying life at Athelney. Followers came in
slowly, and provender and supplies of all kinds are hard to wring
from the pagan, and harder still to take from Christian men.
One day, while it was yet so cold that the water was still frozen,
the King's people had gone out " to get them fish or fowl, or some
such purveyance as they sustained themselves withal." No
one was left in the royal hut for the moment but himself, and
his mother-in-law Eadburgha. The King — after his constant
wont whensoever he had opportunity — was reading from the
Psalms of David, out of the Manual which he carried always
in his bosom. At this moment a poor man appeared at the
door and begged for a morsel of bread "for Christ his sake."
Whereupon the King, receiving the stranger as a brother, called
to his mother-in-law to give him to eat. Eadburgha replied
that there was but one loaf in their store, and a little wine in a
pitcher, a provision wholly insufficient for his own family and
people. But the King bade her nevertheless to give the stran-
ger part of the last loaf, which she accordingly did. But when
he had been served the stranger was no more seen, and the loaf
remained whole, and the pitcher full to the brim. Alfred,
meantime, had turned to his reading, over which he fell asleep,
and dreamt that St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne stood by him, and
told him it was he who had been his guest, and that God had seen
his afflictions and those of his people, which were now about
to end, in token whereof his people would return that day from
their expedition with a great take of fish. The King awaken-
ing, and being much impressed with his dream, called to his
mother-in-law and recounted it to her, who thereupon assured
him that she too had been overcome with sleep and had had
the same dream. And while they yet talked together on what
had happened so strangely to them, their servants come in,
E.,VOL. v.— 5.

66 CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

bringing fish enough, as it seemed to them, to have fed an
army.

The monkish legend goes on to tell that on the next morn-
ing the King crossed to the mainland in a boat, and wound his
horn thrice, which drew to him before noon five hundred men.
What we may think of the story and the dream, as Sir John
Spelman says, "is not here very much material," seeing that,
whether we deem it natural or supernatural, "the one as well
as the other serves at God's appointment, by raising or deject-
ing of the mind with hopes or fears, to lead man to the res-
olution of those things whereof he has before ordained the
event."

Alfred, we may be sure, was ready to accept and be thank-
ful for any help, let it come from whence it might, and soon
after Easter it was becoming clear that the time is at hand for
more than skirmishing expeditions. Through all the neigh-
boring counties word is spreading that their hero King is alive
and on foot again, and that there will be another chance for
brave men ere long of meeting once more these scourges of the
land under his leading.

A popular legend is found in the later chroniclers which
relates that at this crisis of his fortunes Alfred, not daring to
rely on any evidence but that of his own senses as to the num-
bers, disposition, and discipline of the pagan army, assumed
the garb of a minstrel and with one attendant visited the camp
of Guthrum. Here he stayed, "showing tricks and making
sport," until he had penetrated to the King's tents, and learned
all that he wished to know. After satisfying himself as to the
chances of a sudden attack, he returns to Athelney, and, the
time having come for a great effort, if his people will but make
it, sends round messengers to the aldermen and king's thanes
of neighboring shires, giving them a tryst for the seventh week
after Easter, the second week in May.

On or about the i2th of May, 878, King Alfred left his island
in the great wood, and his wife and children and such household
gods as he had gathered round him there, and came publicly
forth among his people once more, riding to Egbert's Stone —
probably Brixton — on the east of Selwood, a distance of twenty-
six miles. Here met him the men of the neighboring shires —

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 67

Odda, no doubt, with his men of Devonshire, full of courage
and hope after their recent triumph; the men of Somerset-
shire, under their brave and faithful alderman Ethelnoth; and
the men of Wilts and Hants, such of them at least as had not
fled the country or made submission to the enemy. "And
when they saw their King alive after such great tribulation,
they received him, as he merited, with joy and acclamation."
The gathering had been so carefully planned by Alfred and
the nobles who had been in conference or correspondence with
him at Athelney that the Saxon host was organized and ready
for immediate action on the very day of muster. Whether
Alfred had been his own spy we cannot tell, but it is plain that
he knew well what was passing in the pagan camp, and how
necessary swiftness and secrecy were to the success of his at-
tack.

Local traditions cannot be much relied upon for events which
took place a thousand years ago, but where there is clearly noth-
ing improbable in them they are at least worth mentioning.
We may note, then, that according to Somersetshire tradition,
first collected by Dr. Giles — himself a Somersetshire man,
and one who, besides his Life of Alfred and other excellent
works bearing on the time, is the author of the Harmony of the
Chroniclers, published by the Alfred Committee in 1852 — the
signal for the actual gathering of the West Saxons at Egbert's
Stone was given by a beacon lighted on the top of Stourton hill,
where Alfred's Tower now stands. Such a beacon would be
hidden from the Danes, who must have been encamped about
Westbury, by the range of the Wiltshire hills, while it would be
visible to the west over the low country toward the Bristol
Channel, and to the south far into Dorsetshire.

Not an hour was lost by Alfred at the place of muster. The
bands which came together there were composed of men well
used to arms, each band under its own alderman, or reeve.
The small army he had himself been disciplining at Athelney,
and training in skirmishes during the last few months, would
form a reliable centre on which the rest would have to form as
best they could. So after one day's halt he breaks up his camp
at Egbert's Stone and marches to y£glea, now called Clay hill,
an important height, commanding the vale to the north of West-

68 CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

bury, which the Danish army were now occupying. The day's
march of the army would be a short five miles. Here the
annals record that St. Neot, his kinsman, appeared to him, and
promised that on the morrow his misfortunes would end.

There are still traces of rude earthworks round the top of
Clay hill, which are said to have been thrown up by Alfred's
army at this time. If there had been time for such a work, it
would undoubtedly have been a wise step, as a fortified en-
campment here would have served Alfred in good stead in case
of a reverse. But the few hours during which the army halted
on Clay hill would have been quite too short time for such an
undertaking, which, moreover, would have exhausted the troops.
It is more likely that the earthworks, which are of the oldest
type, similar to those at White Horse hill, above Ashdown, were
there long before Alfred's arrival in May, 878. After resting
one night on Clay hill, Alfred led out his men in close order of
battle against the pagan host, which lay at Ethandune. There
has been much doubt among the antiquaries as to the site of
Ethandune, but Dr. Giles and others have at length established
the claims of Edington, a village seven miles from Clay hill, on
the northeast, to the spot where the strength of the second wave
of pagan invasion was utterly broken and rolled back weak
and helpless from the rock of the West Saxon kingdom.

Sir John Spelman, relying apparently only on the authority
of Nicholas Harpesfeld's Ecclesiastical History of England,
puts a speech into Alfred's mouth, which he is supposed to have
delivered before the battle of Edington. He tells them that
the great sufferings of the land had been yet far short of what
their sins had deserved. That God had only dealt with them
as a loving Father, and was now about to succor them, having
already stricken their foe with fear and astonishment, and given
him, on the other hand, much encouragement by dreams and
otherwise. That they had to do with pirates and robbers, who
had broken faith with them over and over again ; and the issue
they had to try that day was whether Christ's faith or hea-
thenism was henceforth to be established in England.

There is no trace of any such speech in the Saxon Chronicle
or Asser, and the one reported does not ring like that of Judas
Maccabaeus. That Alfred's soul was on fire that morning, on

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 69

finding himself once more at the head of a force he could rely
on, and before the enemy he had met so often, we may be sure
enough, but shall never know how the fire kindled into speech,
if indeed it did so at all. In such supreme moments many of
the strongest men have no word to say — keep all their heat
within.

Nor have we any clew to the numbers who fought on either
side at Ethandune, or indeed in any of Alfred's battles. In the
Chronicles there are only a few vague and general statements,
from which little can be gathered. The most precise of them is
that in the Saxon Chronicle, which gives eight hundred and
forty as the number of men who were slain, as we heard, with
Hubba before Cynuit fort, in Devonshire, earlier in this same
year. Such a death-roll, in an action in which only a small
detachment of the pagan army was engaged, would lead to the
conclusion that the armies were far larger than one would
expect. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine how any
large bodies of men could find subsistence in a small country,
which was the seat of so devastating a war, and in which so
much land remained still unreclaimed. But whatever the
power on either side amounted to we may be quite sure that it
had been exerted to the utmost to bring as large a force as pos-
sible into line at Ethandune.

Guthrum fought to protect Chippenham, his base of opera-
tions, some sixteen miles in his rear, and all the accumulated
plunder of the busy months which had passed since Twelfth
Night; and it is clear that his men behaved with the most des-
perate gallantry. The fight began at noon — one chronicler
says at sunrise, but the distance makes this impossible unless
Alfred marched in the night — and lasted through the greater
part of the day. Warned by many previous disasters the Saxons
never broke their close order, and so, though greatly outnum-
bered, hurled back again and again the onslaughts of the
Northmen. At last Alfred and his Saxons prevailed, and
smote his pagan foes with a very great slaughter, and pursued
them up to their fortified camp on Bratton hill or Edge, into
which the great body of the fugitives threw themselves. All
who were left outside were slain, and the great spoil was all
recovered. The camp may still be seen, called Bratton Castle,

7o CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

with its double ditches and deep trenches, and barrow in the
midst sixty yards long, and its two entrances guarded by
mounds. It contains more than twenty acres, and commands
the whole country side. There can be little doubt that this
camp, and not Chippenham, which is sixteen miles away, was
the last refuge of Guthrum and the great northern army on
Saxon soil.

So, in three days from the breaking up of his little camp at
Athelney, Alfred was once more King of all England south of the
Thames; for this army of pagans, shut up within their earth-
works on Bratton Edge, are little better than a broken and dis-
orderly rabble, with no supplies and no chance of succor from
any quarter. Nevertheless he will make sure of them, and
above all will guard jealously against any such mishap as that
of 876, when they stole out of Wareham, murdered the horse-
men he had left to watch them, and got away to Exeter. So
Bratton camp is strictly besieged by Alfred with his whole
power.

Guthrum, the destroyer, and now the King of East Anglia,
the strongest and ablest of all the Northmen who had ever landed
in England, is now at last fairly in Alfred's power. At Read-
ing, Wareham, Exeter, he had always held a fortified camp, on
a river easily navigable by the Danish war-ships, where he might
look for speedy succor or whence at the worst he might hope to
escape to the sea. But now he, with the remains of his army,
is shut up in an inland fort with no ships on the Avon, the
nearest river, even if they could cut their way out and reach it,
and no hopes of reinforcements overland. Halfdene is the
nearest viking who might be called to the rescue, and he, in
Northumbria, is far too distant. It is a matter of a few days
only, for food runs short at once in the besieged camp. In
former years, or against any other enemy, Guthrum would
probably have preferred to sally out and cut his way through
the Saxon lines, or die sword in hand as a son of Odin should.
Whether it were that the wild spirit in him is thoroughly broken
for the time by the unexpected defeat at Ethandune, or that
long residence in a Christian land and contact with Christian
subjects have shaken his faith in his own gods, or that he has
learned to measure and appreciate the strength and nobleness of

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 71

the man he had so often deceived, at any rate for the time Guth-
rum is subdued. At the end of fourteen days he sends to
Alfred, suing humbly for terms of any kind; offering on the
part of the army as many hostages as may be required, without
asking for any in return; once again giving solemn pledges to
quit Wessex for good; and, above all, declaring his own readi-
ness to receive baptism. If it had not been for the last proposal,
we may doubt whether even Alfred would have allowed the
ruthless foes with whom he and his people had fought so often,
and with such varying success, to escape now. Over and over
again they had sworn to him, and broken their oaths the mo-
ment it suited their purpose; had given hostages, and left them
to their fate. In all English kingdoms they had now for ten
years been destroying and pillaging the houses of God and
slaying even women and children. They had driven his sis-
ter's husband from the throne of Mercia, and had grievously
tortured the martyr Edmund. If ever foe deserved no mercy,
Guthrum and his army were the men.

When David smote the children of Moab, he "measured
them with a line, casting them down to the ground; even with
two lines measured he to put to death, and with one full line
to keep alive." When he took Rabbah of the children of
Ammon, "he brought forth the people that were therein, and
put them under saws and under harrows of iron, and under
axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln."
That was the old Hebrew method, even under King David, and
in the ninth century Christianity had as yet done little to soften
the old heathen custom of "woe to the vanquished." Charle-
magne's proselytizing campaigns had been as merciless as
Mahomet's. But there is about this English King a divine
patience, the rarest of all virtues in those who are set in high
places. He accepts Guthrum's proffered terms at once, rejoic-
ing over the chance of adding these fierce heathen warriors to the
church of his Master, by an act of mercy which even they must
feel. And so the remnant of the army are allowed to march
out of their fortified camp, and to recross the Avon into Mercia,
not quite five months after the day of their winter attack and
the seizing of Chippenham. The northern army went away to
Cirencester, where they stayed over the winter, and then return-

72 CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

ing into East Anglia settled down there, and Alfred and Wessex
hear no more of them. Never was triumph more complete or
better deserved; and in all history there is no instance of more
noble use of victory than this. The West Saxon army was not
at once disbanded. Alfred led them back to Athelney, where
he had left his wife and children; and while they are there,
seven weeks after the surrender, Guthrum and thirty of the
bravest of his followers arrive to make good their pledge.

The ceremony of baptism was performed at Wedmore, a
royal residence which had probably escaped the fate of Chip-
penham, and still contained a church. Here Guthrum and his
thirty nobles were sworn in, the soldiers of a greater King than
Woden, and the white linen cloth, the sign of their new faith,
was bound round their heads. Alfred himself was godfather
to the viking, giving him the Christian name of Athelstan; and
the chrism-loosing, or unbinding of the sacramental cloths, was
performed on the eighth day by Ethelnoth, the faithful alder-
man of Somersetshire. After the religious ceremony there still
remained the task of settling the terms upon which the victors
and vanquished were hereafter to live together side by side in
the same island; for Alfred had the wisdom, even in his enemy's
humiliation, to accept the accomplished fact, and to acknowl-
edge East Anglia as a Danish kingdom. The Witenagemot
had been summoned to Wedmore, and was sitting there, and
with their advice the treaty was then made, from which, accord-
ing to some historians, English history begins.

We have still the text of the two documents which together
contain Alfred and Guthrum's peace, or the treaty of Wed-
more; the first and shorter being probably the articles hastily
agreed on before the capitulation of the Danish army at Chippen-
ham; the latter the final terms settled between Alfred and his
witan, and Guthrum and his thirty nobles, after mature delib-
eration and conference at Wedmore, but not formally executed
until some years later.

The shorter one, that made at the capitulation, runs as
follows:

"ALFRED AND GUTHRUM'S PEACE. — This is the peace that
King Alfred and King Guthrum, and the witan of all the Eng-

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 73

lish nation, and all the people that are in East Anglia have all
ordained, and with oaths confirmed, for themselves and their
descendants, as well for born as unborn, who reck of God's
mercy or of ours.

" First, concerning our land boundaries. These are upon the
Thames, and then upon the Lea, and along the Lea unto its
source, then straight to Bedford, then up the Ouse to Watling
Street.

"Then there is this: if a man be slain we reckon all equally
dear, English and Dane, at eight half marks of pure gold, except
the churl who dwells on gavel land and their leisings, they are
also equally dear at two hundred shillings. And if a king's
thane be accused of manslaughter, if he desire to clear himself,
let him do so before twelve king's thanes. If any man accuse a
man who is of less degree than king's thane, let him clear him-
self with eleven of his equals and one king's thane. And so in
every suit which be for more than four mancuses; and if he
dare not, let him pay for it threefold, as it may be valued.

"Of Warrantors. — And that every man know his warrantor,
for men, and for horses, and for oxen.

"And we all ordained, on that day that the oaths were sworn,
that neither bondman nor freeman might go to the army with-
out leave, nor any of them to us. But if it happen that any of
them from necessity will have traffic with us, or we with them,
for cattle or goods, that is to be allowed on this wise: that
hostages be given in pledge of peace, and as evidence whereby
it may be known that the party has a clean book."

By the treaty Alfred is thus established as King of the whole
of England south of the Thames; of all the old kingdom of
Essex south of the Lea, including London, Hertford, and St.
Albans; of the whole of the great kingdom of Mercia, which
lay to the west of Watling Street, and of so much to the east as
lay south of the Ouse. That he should have regained so much
proves the straits to which he had brought the northern army,
who would have to give up all their new settlements round
Gloster. That he should have resigned so much of the king-
dom which had acknowledged his grandfather, father, and
brothers as overlords proves how formidable his foe still was,

74 CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

even in defeat, and how thoroughly the northeastern parts of
the island had by this time been settled by the Danes.

The remainder of the short treaty would seem simply to be
provisional, and intended to settle the relations between Alfred's
subjects and the army while it remained within the limits of the
new Saxon kingdom. Many of the soldiers would have to
break up their homes in Glostershire; and, with this view, the
halt at Cirencester is allowed, where, as we have already heard,
they rest until the winter. While they remain in the Saxon
kingdom there is to be no distinction between Saxon and Dane.
The were-gild, or life-ransom, is to be the same in each case for
men of like rank; and all suits for more than four mancuses
(about twenty-four shillings) are to be tried by a jury of peers
of the accused. On the other hand, only necessary communi-
cations are to be allowed between the northern army and the
people; and where there must be trading, fair and peaceful
dealing is to be insured by the giving of hostages. This last
provision, and the clause declaring that each man shall know
his warrantor, inserted in a five-clause treaty, where nothing but
what the contracting parties must hold to be of the very first
importance would find place, are another curious proof of the
care with which our ancestors, and all Germanic tribes, guarded
against social isolation — the doctrine that one man has nothing
to do with another — a doctrine which the great body of their
descendants, under the leading of Schultze, Delitzsch, and
others, seem likely to repudiate with equal emphasis in these
latter days, both in Germany and England.

Thus, in July, 878, the foundations of the new kingdom of
England were laid, for new it undoubtedly became when the
treaty of Wedmore was signed. The Danish nation, no longer
strangers and enemies, are recognized by the heir of Cerdic as
lawful owners of the full half of England. Having achieved
which result, Guthrum and the rest of the new converts leave
the Saxon camp and return to Cirencester at the end of twelve
days, loaded with such gifts as it was still in the power of their
conquerors to bestow: and Alfred was left in peace, to turn to
a greater and more arduous task than any he had yet encoun-
tered.

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 75

JOHN RICHARD GREEN

Alfred was the noblest as he was the most complete embodi-
ment of all that is great, all that is lovable, in the English tem-
per. He combined as no other man has ever combined its
practical energy, its patient and enduring force, its profound
sense of duty, the reserve and self-control that steady in it a
wide outlook and a restless daring, its temperance and fairness,
its frank geniality, its sensitiveness to action, its poetic tender-
ness, its deep and passionate religion. Religion, indeed, was the
groundwork of Alfred's character. His temper was instinct with
piety. Everywhere throughout his writings that remain to us
the name of God, the thought of God, stir him to outbursts of
ecstatic adoration.

But he was no mere saint. He felt none of that scorn of the
world about him which drove the nobler souls of his day to mon-
astery or hermitage. Vexed as he was by sickness and con-
stant pain, his temper took no touch of asceticism. His rare
geniality, a peculiar elasticity and mobility of nature, gave color
and charm to his life. A sunny frankness and openness of
spirit breathe in the pleasant chat of his books, and what he
was in his books he showed himself in his daily converse.
Alfred was in truth an artist, and both the lights and shadows
of his life were those of the artistic temperament. His love of
books, his love of strangers, his questionings of travellers and
scholars, betray an imaginative restlessness that longs to break
out of the narrow world of experience which hemmed him in.
At one tune he jots down news of a voyage to the unknown seas
of the north. At another he listens to tidings which his envoys
bring back from the churches of Malabar.

And side by side with this restless outlook of the artistic
nature he showed its tenderness and susceptibility, its vivid
apprehension of unseen danger, its craving for affection, its
sensitiveness to wrong. It was with himself rather than with
his reader that he communed as thoughts of the foe without, of
ingratitude and opposition within, broke the calm pages of
Gregory or Boethius.

"Oh, what a happy man was he," he cries once, "that man
that had a naked sword hanging over his head from a single
thread; so as to me it always did!" "Desirest thou power?"

76 CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

he asks at another time. " But thou shalt never obtain it without
sorrows — sorrows from strange folk, and yet keener sorrows
from thine own kindred." "Hardship and sorrow!" he breaks
out again; "not a king but would wish to be without these
if he could. But I know that he cannot!"

The loneliness which breathes in words like these has often
begotten in great rulers a cynical contempt of men and the
judgments of men. But cynicism found no echo in the large
and sympathetic temper of Alfred. He not only longed for the
love of his subjects, but for the remembrance of "generations"
to come. Nor did his inner gloom or anxiety check for an
instant his vivid and versatile activity. To the scholars he
gathered round him he seemed the very type of a scholar,
snatching every hour he could find to read or listen to books
read to him. The singers of his court found in him a brother
singer, gathering the old songs of his people to teach them to
his children, breaking his renderings from the Latin with simple
verse, solacing himself in hours of depression with the music
of the Psalms.

He passed from court and study to plan buildings and in-
struct craftsmen in gold work, to teach even falconers and dog-
keepers their business. But all this versatility and ingenuity
was controlled by a cool good sense. Alfred was a thorough
man of business. He was careful of detail, laborious, method-
ical. He carried in his bosom a little handbook in which he
noted things as they struck him — now a bit of family geneal-
ogy, now a prayer, now such a story as that of Ealdhelm play-
ing minstrel on the bridge. Each hour of the day had its
appointed task; there was the same order in the division of his
revenue and in the arrangement of his court.

Wide, however, and various as was the King's temper, its
range was less wonderful than its harmony. Of the narrow-
ness, of the want of proportion, of the predominance of one
quality over another which go commonly with an intensity of
moral purpose Alfred showed not a trace. Scholar and soldier,
artist and man of business, poet and saint, his character kept
that perfect balance which charms us in no other Englishman
save Shakespeare. But full and harmonious as his temper
was, it was the temper of a king. Every power was bent to

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 77

the work of rule. His practical energy found scope for itself
in the material and administrative restoration of the wasted
land.

His intellectual activity breathed fresh life into education and
literature. His capacity for inspiring trust and affection drew
the hearts of Englishmen to a common centre, and began the
upbuilding of a new England. And all was guided, controlled,
ennobled by a single aim. "So long as I have lived," said the
King as life closed about him, "I have striven to live worthily."
Little by little men came to know what such a life of worthi-
ness meant. Little by little they came to recognize in Alfred a
ruler of higher and nobler stamp than the world had seen. Never
had it seen a king who lived solely for the good of his people.
Never had it seen a ruler who set aside every personal aim to
devote himself solely to the welfare of those whom he ruled.
It was this grand self-mastery that gave him his power over the
men about him. Warrior and conqueror as he was, they saw
him set aside at thirty the warrior's dream of conquest; and
the self-renouncement of Wedmore struck the keynote of his
reign. But still more is it this height and singleness of purpose,
this absolute concentration of the noblest faculties to the noblest
aim, that lifts Alfred out of the narrow bounds of Wessex.

If the sphere of his action seems too small to justify the
comparison of him with the few whom the world owns as its
greatest men, he rises to their level in the moral grandeur of his
life. And it is this which has hallowed his memory among his
own English people. "I desire," said the King in some of his
latest words, " I desire to leave to the men that come after me a
remembrance of me in good works."

His aim has been more than fulfilled. His memory has
come down to us with a living distinctness through the mists of
exaggeration and legend which time gathered round it. The
instinct of the people has clung to him with a singular affection.
The love which he won a thousand years ago has lingered
round his name from that day to this. While every other name
of those earlier times has all but faded from the recollection of
Englishmen, that of Alfred remains familiar to every English
child.

The secret of Alfred's government lay in his own vivid energy.

78 CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

He could hardly have chosen braver or more active helpers than
those whom he employed both in his political and in his educa-
tional efforts. The children whom he trained to rule proved
the ablest rulers of their time. But at the outset of his reign he
stood alone, and what work was to be done was done by the
King himself. His first efforts were directed to the material
restoration of his realm. The burnt and wasted country saw
its towns built again, forts erected in positions of danger, new
abbeys founded, the machinery of justice and government re-
stored, the laws codified and amended. Still more strenuous
were Alfred's efforts for its moral and intellectual restoration.
Even in Mercia and Northumbria the pirate's sword had left
few survivors of the schools of Egbert or Bede, and matters
were even worse in Wessex, which had been as yet the most
ignorant of the English kingdoms.

"When I began to reign," said Alfred, "I cannot remember
one priest south of the Thames who could render his service-
book into English." For instructors indeed he could find only
a few Mercian prelates and priests, with one Welsh bishop, Asser.

"Formerly," the King writes bitterly, "men came hither
from foreign lands to seek for instruction, and now when we
desire it we can only obtain it from abroad." But his mind
was far from being prisoned within his own island. He sent a
Norwegian shipmaster to explore the White Sea, and Wulfstan
to trace the coast of Esthonia; envoys bore his presents to the
churches of India and Jerusalem, and an annual mission car-
ried Peter's pence to Rome.

But it was with the Franks that his intercourse was closest,
and it was from them that he drew the scholars to aid him in his
work of education. A scholar named Grimbald came from St.
Omer to preside over his new abbey at Winchester; and John,
the old Saxon, was fetched from the abbey of Corbey to rule a
monastery and school that Alfred's gratitude for his deliverance
from the Danes raised in the marshes of Athelney. The real
work, however, to be done was done, not by these teachers, but
by the King himself. Alfred established a school for the young
nobles in his court, and it was to the need of books for these
scholars in their own tongue that we owe his most remarkable
literary effort.

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 79

He took his books as he found them — they were the popu-
lar manuals of his age — the Consolation oj Boethius, the Pas-
toral of Pope Gregory, the compilation of Orosius, then the one
accessible handbook of universal history, and the history of his
own people by Bede. He translated these works into English,
but he was far more than a translator, he was an editor for the
people. Here he omitted, there he expanded. He enriched
Orosius by a sketch of the new geographical discoveries in the
north. He gave a West Saxon form to his selections from
Bede. In one place he stops to explain his theory of govern-
ment, his wish for a thicker population, his conception of
national welfare as consisting in a due balance of priest, soldier,
and churl. The mention of Nero spurs him to an outbreak on
the abuses of power. The cold providence of Boethius gives
way to an enthusiastic acknowledgment of the goodness of
God.

As he writes, his large-hearted nature flings off its royal
mantle, and he talks as a man to men. "Do not blame me,"
he prays with a charming simplicity, "if any know Latin better
than I, for every man must say what he says and do what he
does according to his ability."

But simple as was his aim, Alfred changed the whole front
of our literature. Before him, England possessed in her own
tongue one great poem and a train of ballads and battle-songs.
Prose she had none. The mighty roll of the prose books that
fill her libraries begins with the translations of Alfred, and
above all with the chronicle of his reign. It seems likely that
the King's rendering of Bede's history gave the first impulse
toward the compilation of what is known as the English or
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was certainly thrown into its
present form during his reign. The meagre lists of the kings
of Wessex and the bishops of Winchester, which had been pre-
served from older times, were roughly expanded into a national
history by insertions from Bede; but it is when it reaches the
reign of Alfred that the chronicle suddenly widens into the
vigorous narrative, full of life and originality, that marks the
gift of a new power to the English tongue. Varying as it does
from age to age in historic value, it remains the first vernacular
history of any Teutonic people, and, save for the Gothic trans-

8o CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

lations of Ulfilas, the earliest and most venerable monument of
Teutonic prose.

But all this literary activity was only a part of that general
upbuilding of Wessex by which Alfred was preparing for a
fresh contest with the stranger. He knew that the actual win-
ning back of the Danelagh must be a work of the sword, and
through these long years of peace he was busy with the creation
of such a force as might match that of the Northmen. A fleet
grew out of the little squadron which Alfred had been forced to
man with Frisian seamen.

The national jyrd or levy of all freemen at the King's call
was reorganized. It was now divided into two halves, one of
which served in the field while the other guarded its own burhs
(burghs or boroughs) and townships, and served to relieve its
fellow when the men's forty days of service were ended. A
more disciplined military force was provided by subjecting all
owners of five hides of land to "thane-service," a step which
recognized the change that had now substituted the thegn
for the eorl and in which we see the beginning of a feudal sys-
tem. How effective these measures were was seen when the
new resistance they met on the Continent drove the Northmen
to a fresh attack on Britain.

In 893 a large fleet steered for the Andredsweald, while the
sea-king Hasting entered the Thames. Alfred held both at
bay through the year till the men of the Danelagh rose at their
comrades' call. Wessex stood again front to front with the
Northmen. But the King's measures had made the realm
strong enough to set aside its old policy of defence for one
of vigorous attack. His son Edward and his son-in-law
Ethelred, whom he had set as ealdorman,1 over what remained
of Mercia, showed themselves as skilful and active as the
King.

The aim of the Northmen was to rouse again the hostility of
the Welsh, but while Alfred held Exeter against their fleet,
Edward and Ethelred caught their army near the Severn and
overthrew it with a vast slaughter at Buttington. The destruc-

1 Primitive of alderman ; in this period, a chieftain, lord, or earl ;
subsequently, the chief magistrate of a territorial district, as of a county
or province.

CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT 81

tion of their camp on the Lea by the united English forces
ended the war; in 897 Hasting again withdrew across the
Channel, and the Danelagh made peace. It was with the peace
he had won still about him that Alfred died in 901 ; and warrior
as his son Edward had shown himself, he clung to his father's
policy of rest.

B., VOL. V.— 6.

ORIGIN OF THE GERMAN BURGHERS OR
MIDDLE CLASSES

A.D. 911-936

WOLFGANG MENZEL

The famous treaty of Verdun (843) was the culmination of a series of
civil wars between the descendants of Charlemagne. By it the great
empire which Charlemagne had built up was divided among his three
grandsons, Lothair, Charles the Bald, and Louis. With this treaty the
history of the Franks closes, and Germany and France take their places,
along with Italy, as distinct and separate nations.

The Teutonic kingdom, or Germany, fell to Louis. On his death, in
876, after an uneventful reign, he was succeeded by his sons Charles the
Fat, Carloman, and Louis. The latter two dying, Charles the Fat be-
came sole King of Germany. A little later he became ruler of Italy, and
was crowned emperor by the pope. Then he was invited by the West
Franks to become their king. Thus almost the whole empire of the great
Charlemagne was reunited in the hands of Charles the Fat. However,
his people soon became disgusted with his weak efforts in the treatment
of a series of invasions by the Northmen, and he was deposed in 887.
He died the next year, and the Carlovingian empire fell to pieces, never to
be united again.

Charles the Fat was succeeded in Germany by his nephew, Arnulf,
who also took possession of Italy and was crowned emperor by the
pope, though his power in Italy was merely nominal. On his death in
889 his second son, Ludwig (Louis III) the child, became king in Ger-
many.

The race of Charlemagne in Germany ended in 91 1 by the death of
Ludwig. Though a mere child he had been enthroned through the in-
trigues of Otto, Duke of Saxony, and Hatto, Archbishop of Mayence, who
virtually governed the empire during Ludwig's short reign.

The empire at that time was composed of various nations, each under
the rule of a powerful duke. The bond of union between these nations
was slight. The dukes were constantly waging war against each other,
and these internal dissensions greatly weakened the central govern*
meat.

Sa

FIRST DYNASTY OF SAXON KINGS 83

At the same time the empire was exposed to the incursions of the
Magyars or Hungarians, whose wholesale depredations and cruelties so
dismayed the child-king that he concluded a treaty of peace with the in-
vaders and consented to pay them a ten-years' tribute.

The Germans were deeply sensible of the dishonor incurred by this
ignominious tribute, and of the dangers of their internal dissensions.
They longed for a stronger government, and on the death of Ludwig the
crown was offered to Otto of Saxony, the strongest of the dukes. He
declined in favor of Conrad, Duke of Franconia, a descendant in the fe-
maJe line from Charlemagne. But Conrad's rule was weak, and during
his short reign of seven years civil war continued, part of the time with
Henry the Fowler, son of Duke Otto (who died in 912), owing to Con-
rad's attempt to separate Thuringia from Saxony in order to weaken
Henry's ducal power. The empire also was again invaded by the Slavs
and Hungarians.

Conrad died without male issue in 918, whereupon the Germans elected
as emperor Henry the Fowler, who thus became the first of the Saxon
dynasty in Germany, and proved himself to be the wisest and most vig-
orous sovereign who had ruled in Germany since the days of Charle-
magne.

'"THE extinction of the Carlovingian line did not sever the bond
of union that existed between the different nations of Ger-
many, although a contention arose between them concerning
the election of the new emperor, each claiming that privilege
for itself; and as the increase of the ducal power had naturally
led to a wider distinction between them, the diet convoked for
the purpose represented nations instead of classes. There were
consequently four nations and four votes: the Franks under
Duke Conrad, whose authority, nevertheless, could not com-
pete with that of the now venerable Hatto, Archbishop of May-
ence, who may be said to have been, at that period, the pope
in Germany; the Saxons, Frieslanders, Thuringians, and some
of the subdued Slavi, under Duke Otto; the Swabians, with
Switzerland and Elsace, under different grafs, who, as the im-
mediate officers of the crown, were named kammerboten, in order
to distinguish them from the grafs nominated by the dukes; the
Bavarians, with the Tyrolese and some of the subdued eastern
Slavi, under Duke Arnulf the Bad, the son of the brave duke
Luitpold. The Lothringians formed a fifth nation, under their
duke Regingar, but were at that period incorporated with France.
The first impulse of the diet was to bestow the crown on
the most powerful among the different competitors, and it

84 FIRST DYNASTY OF SAXON KINGS

was accordingly offered to Otto of Saxony, who not only pos-
sessed the most extensive territory and the most warlike sub-
jects, but whose authority, having descended to him from his
father and grandfather, was also the most firmly secured. But
both Otto and his ancient ally, the bishop Hatto, had found the
system they had hitherto pursued, of reigning in the name of
an imbecile monarch, so greatly conducive to their interest that
they were disinclined to abandon it. Otto was a man who
mistook the prudence inculcated by private interest for wisdom,
and his mind, narrow as the limits of his dukedom, and solely
intent upon the interests of his family, was incapable of the
comprehensive views requisite in a German emperor, and in-
different to the welfare of the great body of the nation. The
examples of Boso, of Odo, of Rudolph of Upper Burgundy, and
of Berenger, who, favored by the difference in descent of the
people they governed, had all succeeded in severing themselves
from the empire, were ever present to his imagination, and he
believed that as, on the other side of the Rhine, the Frank, the
Burgundian, and the Lombard severally obeyed an indepen-
dent sovereign, the East Frank, the Saxon, the Swabian, and the
Bavarian, on this side of the Rhine, were also desirous of assert-
ing a similar independence, and that it would be easier and less
hazardous to found a hereditary dukedom in a powerful and
separate state than to maintain the imperial dignity, under-
mined, as it was, by universal hostility.

The influence of Hatto and the consent of Otto placed
Conrad, Duke of Franconia, on the imperial throne. Sprung
from a newly risen family, a mere creature of the bishop, his
nobility as a feudal lord only dating from the period of the
Babenberg feud, he was regarded by the Church as a pliable
tool and by the dukes as little to be feared. His weakness was
quickly demonstrated by his inability to retain the rich allods
of the Carlovingian dynasty as heir to the imperial crown, and
his being constrained to share them with the rest of the dukes;
he was, nevertheless, more fully sensible of the dignity and of
the duties of his station than those to whom he owed his election
probably expected. His first step was to recall Regingar of
Lothringia, who was oppressed by France, to his allegiance as
vassal of the empire.

FIRST DYNASTY OF SAXON KINGS 85

Otto died in 912, and his son Henry, a high-spirited youth,
who had greatly distinguished himself against the Slavi, ere
long quarrelled with the aged bishop Hatto. According to the
legendary account, the bishop sent him a golden chain so
skilfully contrived as to strangle its wearer. The truth is that
the ancient family feud between the house of Conrad and that
of Otto, which was connected with the Babenbergers, again
broke out, and that the Emperor attempted again to separate
Thuringia, which Otto had governed since the death of Burk-
hard, from Saxony, in order to hinder the overpreponderance
of that ducal house. Hatto, it is probable, counselled this step,
as a considerable portion of Thuringia belonged to the diocese
of Mayence, and a collision between him and the duke was
therefore unavoidable. Henry flew to arms, and expelled the
adherents of the bishop from Thuringia, which forced the Em-
peror to take the field in the name of the empire against his
haughty vassal. This unfortunate civil war was a signal for a
fresh irruption of the Slavi and Hungarians. During this year
the Bohemians and Sorbi also made an inroad into Thuringia
and Bavaria, and in 913 the Hungarians advanced as far as
Swabia, but being surprised near CEtting by the Bavarians
under Arnulf, who on this occasion bloodily avenged his father's
death, and by the Swabians under the kammerboten Erchanger
and Berthold, they were all, with the exception of thirty of their
number, cut to pieces. Arnulf subsequently embraced a con-
trary line of policy, married the daughter of Geisa, King of
Hungary, and entered into a confederacy with the Hungarian
and the Swabian kammerboten, for the purpose of founding
an independent state in the south of Germany, where he had
already strengthened himself by the appointment of several
markgrafs, Rudiger of Pechlarn in Austria, Rathold in Carin-
thia, and Berthold in the Tyrol. He then instigated all the
enemies of the empire simultaneously to attack the Franks and
Saxons, at that crisis at war with each other, in 915, and while
the Danes under Gorm the Old, and the Obotrites, destroyed
Hamburg, immense hordes of Hungarians, Bohemians, and Sorbi
laid the country waste as far as Bremen.

The Emperor was, meanwhile, engaged with the Saxons.
On one occasion Henry narrowly escaped being taken pris-

86 FIRST DYNASTY OF SAXON KINGS

oner, being merely saved by the stratagem of his faithful servant,
Thiatmar, who caused the Emperor to retreat by falsely an-
nouncing to him the arrival of a body of auxiliaries. At length
a pitched battle was fought near Merseburg, in 915, between
Henry and Eberhard, the Emperor's brother, in which the
Franks1 were defeated, and the superiority of the Saxons re-
mained, henceforward, unquestioned for more than a century.
The Emperor was forced to negotiate with the victor, whom he
induced to protect the northern frontiers of the empire while
he applied himself in person to the reestablishment of order in
the south.

In Swabia, Salomon, Bishop of Constance, who was sup-
ported by the commonalty, adhered to the imperial cause, while
the kammerboten were unable to palliate their treason, and
were gradually driven to extremities. Erchanger, relying upon
aid from Arnulf and the Hungarians, usurped the ducal crown
and took the bishop prisoner. Salomon's extreme popularity
filled him with such rage that he caused the feet of some shep-
herds, who threw themselves on their knees as the captured
prelate passed by, to be chopped off. His wife, Bertha, terror-
stricken at the rashness of her husband, and foreseeing his
destruction, received the prisoner with every demonstration of
humility, and secretly aided his escape. He no sooner reap-
peared than the people flocked in thousands around him. "Heil
Herrol Heil Liebol" ("Hail, master! Hail, beloved one!")
they shouted, and in their zeal attacked and defeated the traitors
and their adherents. Berthold vainly defended himself in his
mountain stronghold of Hohentwiel. The people so urgently
demanded the death of these traitors to their country that the
Emperor convoked a general assembly at Albingen in Swabia,
sentenced Erchanger and Berthold to be publicly beheaded,
and nominated Burkhard, in 917, whose father and uncle had
been assassinated by order of Erchanger, as successor to the
ducal throne. Arnulf withdrew to his fortress at Salzburg, and
quietly awaited more favorable times. His name was branded
with infamy by the people, who henceforth affixed to it the epi-

1 So great a slaughter took place that the Saxons said on the occasion :
" 'Twere difficult to find a hell
Where so many Franks might dwell 1 "

FIRST DYNASTY OF SAXON KINGS 87

thet of "the Bad," and the Nibelungenlied has perpetuated his
detested memory.

Conrad died in 918 without issue. On his death-bed, mind-
ful only of the welfare of the empire, he proved himself deserv-
ing even by his latest act of the crown he had so worthily worn,
by charging his brother Eberhard to forget the ancient feud
between their houses, and to deliver the crown with his own
hands to his enemy, the free-spirited Henry, whom he judged
alone capable of meeting all the exigencies of the State. Eber-
hard obeyed his brother's injunctions, and the princes respected
the will of their dying sovereign.

The princes, with the exception of Burkhard and of Arnulf,
assembled at Fritzlar, elected the absent Henry king, and de-
spatched an embassy to inform him of their decision. It is said
that the young duke was at the time among the Harz Moun-
tains, and that the ambassadors found him in the homely attire
of a sportsman in the fowling floor. He obeyed the call of the
nation without delay and without manifesting surprise. The
error he had committed in rebelling against the State, it was
his firm purpose to atone for by his conduct as emperor. Of a
lofty and majestic stature, although slight and youthful in form,
powerful and active in person, with a commanding and pene-
trating glance, his very appearance attracted popular favor; be-
sides these personal advantages, he was prudent and learned,
and possessed a mind replete with intelligence. The influence
of such a monarch on the progressive development of society
in Germany could not fail of producing results fully equalling
the improvements introduced by Charlemagne.

The youthful Henry, the first of the Saxon line, was pro-
claimed king of Germany at Fritzlar, in 919, by the majority
of votes, and, according to ancient custom, raised upon the
shield. The Archbishop of Mayence offered to anoint him ac-
cording to the usual ceremony, but Henry refused, alleging that
he was content to owe his election to the grace of God and to
the piety of the German princes, and that he left the ceremony
of anointment to those who wished to be still more pious.

Before Henry could pursue his more elevated projects, the
assent of the southern Germans, who had not acknowledged
the choice of their northern compatriots, had to be gained.

88 FIRST DYNASTY OF SAXON KINGS

Burkhard of Swabia, who had asserted his independence, and
who was at that time carrying on a bitter feud with Rudolph,
King of Burgundy, whom he had defeated, in 919, in a bloody
engagement near Winterthur, was the first against whom he
directed the united forces of the empire, in whose name he, at
the same time, offered him peace and pardon. Burkhard, see-
ing himself constrained to yield, took the oath of fealty to the
new-elected King at Worms, but continued to act with almost
his former unlimited authority in Swabia, and even undertook
an expedition into Italy in favor of Rudolph, with whom he had
become reconciled. The Italians, enraged at the wantonness
with which he mocked them, assassinated him. Henry be-
stowed the dukedom of Swabia on Hermann, one of his relations,
to whom he gave Burkhard's widow in marriage. He also
bestowed a portion of the south of Alemannia on King Rudolph
in order to win him over, and in return received from him the
holy lance with which the side of the Saviour had been pierced
as he hung on the cross. Finding it no longer possible to dis-
solve the dukedoms and great fiefs, Henry, in order to strengthen
the unity of the empire, introduced the novel policy of bestow-
ing the dukedoms, as they fell vacant, on his relations and per-
sonal adherents, and of allying the rest of the dukes v/ith him-
self by intermarriage, thus uniting the different powerful houses
in the State into one family.

Bavaria still remained in an unsettled state. Arnulf the
Bad, leagued with the Hungarians, against whom Henry had
great designs, had still much in his power, and Henry, resolved
at any price to dissolve this dangerous alliance, not only con-
cluded peace with this traitor on that condition, but also married
his son Henry to Judith, Arnulf 's daughter, in 921. Arnulf
deprived the rich churches of great part of their treasures, and
was consequently abhorred by the clergy, the chroniclers of
those times, who, chiefly on that account, depicted his character
in such unfavorable colors.

In France, Charles the Simple was still the tool and jest of
the vassals. His most dangerous enemy was Robert, Count of
Paris, brother to Odo, the late King. Both solicited aid from
Henry, but in a battle that shortly ensued near Soissons, Count
Robert losing his life and Charles being defeated, Rudolph of

FIRST DYNASTY OF SAXON KINGS 89

Burgundy, one of Boso's nephews, set himself up as king of
France, and imprisoned Charles the Simple, who craved assist-
ance from the German monarch, to whom he promised to per-
form homage as his liege lord. Henry, meanwhile, contented
himself with expelling Rudolph from Lotharingia, and, after
taking possession of Metz, bestowed that dukedom upon Gisil-
brecht, the son of Regingar, and reincorporated it with the empire.
These successes now roused the apprehensions of the Hungari-
ans, who again poured their invading hordes across the frontier.
In 926 they plundered St. Gall, but were routed near Seck-
ingen by the peasantry, headed by the country people of Hir-
minger, who had been roused by alarm fires; and again in
Alsace, by Count Liutfried: another horde was cut to pieces
near Bleiburg, in Carinthia, by Eberhard and the Count of
Meran. The Hungarian King, probably Zoldan, was, by chance,
taken prisoner during an incursion by the Germans, a circum-
stance turned by Henry to a very judicious use. He restored
the captured prince to liberty, and also agreed to pay him a
yearly tribute, on condition of his entering into a solemn truce
for nine years. The experience of earlier times had taught
Henry that a completely new organization was necessary in the
management of military affairs in Germany before this danger-
ous enemy could be rendered innoxious, and, as an undertaking
of this nature required time, he prudently resolved to incur a
seeming disgrace by means of which he in fact secured the honor
of the State. During this interval of nine years he aimed at
bringing the other enemies of the empire, more particularly the
Slavi, into subjection, and making preparations for an expe-
dition against Hungary by which her power should receive a
fatal blow.

In the mean time Gisilbrecht, the youthful Duke of Loth-
aringia, again rebelled, but was besieged and taken prisoner in
Zuelpich by Henry, who, struck by his noble appearance, re-
stored to him his dukedom, and bestowed upon him his daughter,
Gerberga, in marriage. Rudolph of France also sued for peace,
being hard pressed by his powerful rival, Hugo the Great or
Wise, the son of Robert. Charles the Simple was, on Henry's
demand, restored to liberty, but quickly fell anew into the
power of his faithless vassals.

90 FIRST DYNASTY OF SAXON KINGS

Peace was now established throughout the empire, and
afforded Henry an opportunity for turning his attention to the
introduction of measures, in the interior economy of the State,
calculated to obviate for the future the dangers that had hitherto
threatened it from without. The best expedient against the
irruptions of the Hungarians appeared to him to be the circum-
vallation of the most important districts, the erection of forts
and of fortified cities. The most important point, however, was
to place the garrisons immediately under him as citizens of the
State, commanded by his immediate officers, instead of their
being indirectly governed by the feudal aristocracy and by the
clergy. As these garrisons were intended not only for the pro-
tection of the walls, but also for open warfare, he had them
trained to fight in rank and file, and formed them into a body
of infantry, whose solid masses were calculated to withstand
the furious onset of the Hungarian horse. These garrisons
were solely composed of the ancient freemen, and the whole
measure was, in fact, merely a reform of the ancient arrier-ban,
which no longer sufficed for the protection of the State, and whose
deficiency had long been supplied by the addition of vassals
under the command of their temporal or spiritual lieges, and
by the mercenaries or bodyguards of the emperors. The
ancient class of freemen, who originally composed the arrier-
ban, had been gradually converted into feudal vassals; but
they were at that time still so numerous as to enable Henry to
give them a completely new military organization, which at
once secured to them their freedom, hitherto endangered by
the preponderating power of the feudal aristocracy, and ren-
dered them a powerful support to the throne. By collecting
them into the cities, he afforded them a secure retreat against
the attempts of the grafs, dukes, abbots, and bishops, and
created for himself a body of trusty friends, of whom it would
naturally be expected that they would ever side with the Em-
peror against the nobility.

This new regulation appears to have been founded on the
ancient mode of division. At first, out of every nine freemen
—which recalls the decania — one only was placed within the new
fortress, and the remaining eight were bound — perhaps on ac-
count of their ancient association into corporations or guilds —

FIRST DYNASTY OF SAXON KINGS 91

to nourish and support him; but the remaining freemen, in the
neighborhood of the new cities, appear to have been also gradu-
ally collected within their walls, and to have committed the
cultivation of their lands in the vicinity to their bondmen.
However that may be, the ancient class of freemen completely
disappeared as the cities increased in importance, and it was
only among the wild mountains, where no cities sprang up,
that the centen or cantons and whole districts or gauen of free
peasantry were to be met with.

Henry's original intention in the introduction of this new
system was, it is evident, solely to provide a military force
answering to the exigencies of the State ; still there is no reason
to suppose him blind to the great political advantage to be
derived from the formation of an independent class of citizens;
and that he had in reality premeditated a civil as well as a mili-
tary reformation may be concluded from the fact of his having
established fairs, markets, and public assemblies, which, of
themselves, would be closely connected with civil industry,
within the walls of the cities; and, even if these trading war-
riors were at first merely feudatories of the Emperor, they must
naturally in the end have formed a class of free citizens, the
more so as, attracted within the cities by the advantages offered
to them, their number rapidly and annually increased.

The same military reasons which induced the emperor
Henry to enroll the ancient freemen into a regular corps of in-
fantry, and to form them into a civil corporation, caused him
also to metamorphose the feudal aristocracy into a regular
troop of cavalry and a knightly institution. The wild disorder
with which the mounted vassals of the empire, the dukes, grafs,
bishops, and abbots, each distinguished by his own banner,
rushed to the attack, or vied with each other in the fury of the
assault, was now changed by Henry, who was well versed in
every knightly art, to the disciplined manoeuvres of the line, and
to that of fighting in close ranks, so well calculated to with-
stand the furious onset of their Hungarian foe. The discipline
necessary for carrying these new military tactics into practice
among a nobility habituated to license could alone be enforced
by motives of honor, and Henry accordingly formed a chivalric
institution, which gave rise to new manners and to an enthusi-

92 FIRST DYNASTY OF SAXON KINGS

asm that imparted a new character to the age. The tournament —
from the ancient verb turnen, to wrestle or fight, a public con-
test in every species of warfare, carried on by the knights in
the presence of noble dames and maidens, whose favor they
sought to gain by their prowess, and which chiefly consisted
of tilting and jousting either singly or in troops, the day con-
cluding with a banquet and a dance — was then instituted. In
these tournaments the ancient heroism of the Germans revived;
they were in reality founded upon the ancient pagan legends
of the heroes who carried on an eternal contest in their Walhalla,
in order to win the smiles of the Walkyren, now represented
by earth's well-born dames.

The ancient spirit of brotherhood in arms, which had been
almost quenched by that of self-interest, by the desire of ac-
quiring feudal possessions, by the slavish subjection of the
vassals under their lieges, and by the intrigues of the bishops,
who intermeddled with all feudal matters, also reappeared.
A great universal society of Christian knights, bound to the
observance of peculiar laws, whose highest aim was to fight
only for God — before long also for the ladies — and who swore
never to make use of dishonorable means for success, but solely
to live and to die for honor, was formed; an innovation which,
although merely military in its origin, speedily became of po-
litical importance, for, by means of this knightly honor, the
little vassal of a minor lord was no longer viewed as a mere
underling, but as a confederate in the great universal chivalric
fraternity. There were also many freemen who sometimes
gained their livelihood by offering their services to different
courts, or by robbing on the highways, and who were too proud
to serve on foot; Henry offered them free pardon, and formed
them into a body of light cavalry. In the cities the free citizens,
who were originally intended only to serve as foot soldiery,
appear ere long to have formed themselves into mounted troops,
and to have created a fresh body of infantry out of their artifi-
cers and apprentices. It is certain that every freeman could
pretend to knighthood.

Although the chivalric regulations ascribed to the emperor
Henry, and to his most distinguished vassals, may not be genu-
ine, they offer nevertheless infallible proofs of the most ancient

FIRST DYNASTY OF SAXON KINGS 93

spirit of knighthood. Henry ordained that no one should be
created a knight who either by word or by deed injured the
holy Church; the Pfalzgraf Conrad added, "no one who either
by word or by deed injured the holy German empire"; Her-
mann of Swabia, "no one who injured a woman or a maiden";
Berthold, the brother of Arnulf of Bavaria, "no one who had
ever deceived another or had broken his word"; Conrad of
Franconia, "no one who had ever run away from the field of
battle." These appear to have been, in fact, the first chivalric
laws, for they spring from the spirit of the times, while all the
regulations concerning nobility of birth, the number of an-
cestors, the exclusion of all those who were engaged in trade,
etc., are, it is evident from their very nature, of a much later
origin.

CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES

A.D. 969

STANLEY LANE-POOLE

It was the fate of the religion which Mahomet founded, as it has been
of other great systems, to undergo many sectarian divisions, and to be
used as the instrument of conquest and political power. When Islam
had somewhat departed from the character which it first manifested in
moral sternness and fiery zeal, and had established itself in various parts
of the world on a basis of commerce or of science, rather than that of its
original inspiration, various offshoots of the faith began to assume promi-
nence. Among the sects which sprang up was one that claimed to repre-
sent the true succession of Mahomet. This sect was itself the result of
a schism among the adherents of one of the two principal divisions of
the Moslems — the Shiahs. They maintained that Ali, a relation and the
adopted son of Mahomet and husband of his daughter Fatima, was
the first legitimate imam or successor of the prophet. They regarded the
other and greater division — the Sunnites, who recognized the first three
caliphs, Abu-Bekr, Omar, and Othman — as usurpers. Ali was the fourth
caliph, and the Sunnites in turn looked upon his followers, the Shiahs,
as heretics.

The schism among the Shiahs grew out of the claim of the schismatics
that the legitimate imam or successor of the Prophet must be in the line
of descent from Ali. The sixth imam, Jaffer, upon the death of his eld-
est son, Ismail, appointed another son, Moussa or Moses, his heir; but a
large body of the Shiahs denied the right of Jaffer to make a new nomi-
nation, declaring the imamate to be strictly hereditary. They formed a
new party of Ismailians, and in 908 a chief of this sect, Mahomet, sur-
named el-Mahdi, or the Leader — a title of the Shiahs for their imams —
revolted in Africa. He called himself a descendant of Ismail and
claimed to be the legitimate imam. He aimed at the temporal power of
a caliph, and soon established a rival caliphate in Africa, where he had
obtained a considerable sovereignty. The dynasty thus begun assumed
the name of Fatimites in honor of Fatima. The fourth caliph of this
line, El-Moizz, conquered Egypt about 969, founded the modern Cairo,
and made it his capital. The claims of the Egyptian caliphate were her-
alded throughout all Islam, and its rule was rapidly extended into Syria
and Arabia. It played an important part in the history of the Crusades,
but in 1171 was abolished by the famous Saladin,and Egypt was restored

94

CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES 95

to the obedience which it had formerly owned to Bagdad. The Bagdad
caliphs, called Abbassides — claiming descent from Abbas, the uncle of
Mahomet — remained rulers of Egypt until 1517, or until within twenty
years of the death of the last Abbasside.

HpHREE hundred and thirty years had passed since the Sara-
cens first invaded the valley of the Nile. The people,
with traditional docility, had liberally adopted the religion of
their rulers, and the Moslems now formed the great majority of
the population. Arabs and natives had blended into much the
same race that we now call Egyptians; but so far the mixture
had not produced any conspicuous men. The few command-
ing figures among the governors, Ibn-Tulun, the Ikshid, Kafur,
were foreigners, and even these were but a step above the stereo-
typed official. They essayed no great extension of their domin-
ions; they did not try to extinguish their dangerous neighbors
the schismatic Fatimites; and though they possessed and used
fleets, they ventured upon no excursions against Europe.

The great revolution which had swept over North Africa,
and now spread to Egypt, arose out of the old controversy over
the legitimacy of the caliphate. The prophet Mahomet died
without definitely naming a successor, and thereby bequeathed
an interminable quarrel to his followers. The principle of
election, thus introduced, raised the first three caliphs, Abu-
Bekr, Omar, Othman, to the cathedra at Medina; but a strong
minority held that the "divine right" rested with Ali, the "Lion
of God," first convert to Islam, husband of the prophet's
daughter Fatima, and father of Mahomet's only male descend-
ants. When Ali in turn became the fourth caliph, he was the
mark for jealousy, intrigue, and at length assassination; his
sons, the grandsons of the Prophet, were excluded from the suc-
cession; his family were cruelly persecuted by their successful
rivals, the Ommiad usurpers; and the tragedy of Kerbela and
the murder of Hoseyn set the seal of martyrdom on the holy
family and stirred a passionate enthusiasm which still rouses
intense excitement in the annual representations of the Persian
passion play.

The rent thus opened in Islam was never closed. The
ostracism of Ali " laid the foundation of the grand interminable
schism which has divided the Mahometan Church, and equally

96 CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES

destroyed the practice of charity among the members of their
common creed and endangered the speculative truths of doc-
trine."

The descendants of Ali, though almost universally devoid
of the qualities of great leaders, possessed the persistence and
devotion of martyrs, and their sufferings heightened the fanati-
cal enthusiasm of their supporters. All attempts to recover
the temporal power having proved vain, the Alides fell back
upon the spiritual authority of the successive candidates of the
holy family, whom they proclaimed to be the imams or spir-
itual leaders of the faithful. This doctrine of the imamate
gradually acquired a more mystical meaning, supported by an
allegorical interpretation of the Koran; and a mysterious influ-
ence was ascribed to the imam, who, though hidden from
mortal eye, on account of the persecution of his enemies,
would soon come forward publicly in the character of the ever-
expected mahdi, sweep away the corruptions of the heretical
caliphate, and revive the majesty of the pure lineage of the
prophet. All Mahometans believe in a coming mahdi, a
messiah, who shall restore right and prepare for the second
advent of Mahomet and the tribunal of the last day; but the
Shiahs turned the expectation to special account. They taught
that the true Imam, though invisible to mortal sight, is ever
living; they predicted the mahdi's speedy appearance, and
kept their adherents on the alert to take up arms in his service.
With a view to his coming they organized a pervasive conspir-
acy, instituted a secret society with carefully graduated stages of
initiation, used the doctrines of all religions and sects as weap-
ons in the propaganda, and sent missionaries throughout the
provinces of Islam to increase the numbers of the initiates and
pave the way for the great revolution. We see their partial
success in the ravages of the Karmathians, who were the true
parents of the Fatimites. The leaders and chief missionaries
had really nothing in common with Mahometanism. Among
themselves they were frankly atheists. Their objects were
political, and they used religion in any form, and adapted it in
all modes, to secure proselytes, to whom they imparted only so
much of their doctrine as they were able to bear. These men
were furnished with "an armory of proselytism" as perfect,

CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES 97

perhaps, as any known to history: they had appeals to enthu-
siasm, and arguments for the reason, and "fuel for the fiercest
passions of the people and times in which they moved." Theii
real aim was not religious or constructive, but pure nihilism.
They used the claim of the family of Ali, not because they be-
lieved in any divine right or any caliphate, but because some
flag had to be flourished in order to rouse the people.

One of these missionaries, disguised as a merchant, jour-
neyed back to Barbary in 893, with some Berber pilgrims who
had performed the sacred ceremonies at Mecca. He was wel-
comed by the great tribe of the Kitama, and rapidly acquired an
extraordinary influence over the Berbers — a race prone to
superstition, and easily impressed by the mysterious rites of
initiation and the emotional doctrines of the propagandist, the
wrongs of the prophetic house, and the approaching triumph of
the Mahdi. Barbary had never been much attached to the
caliphate, and for a century it had been practically independent
under the Aglabite dynasty, the barbarous excesses of whose
later sovereigns had alienated their subjects. Alides, more-
over, had established themselves, in the dynasty of the Idri-
sides, in Morocco since the end of the eighth century. The
land was in every respect ripe for revolution, and the success of
Abu-Abdallah esh-Shii, the new missionary, was extraordinarily
rapid. In a few years he had a following of two hundred
thousand armed men, and after a series of battles he drove
Ziyadat-Allah, the last Aglabite prince, out of the country in
908. The missionary then proclaimed the imam Obeid-Allah
as the true caliph and spiritual head of Islam. Whether this
Obeid-Allah was really a descendant of Ali or not, he had been
carefully prepared for the r61e, and reached Barbary in dis-
guise, with the greatest mystery and some difficulty, pursued by
the suspicions of the Bagdad caliph, who, in great alarm, sent
repeated orders for his arrest. Indeed, the victorious mission-
ary had to rescue his spiritual chief from a sordid prison at
Sigilmasa. Then humbly prostrating himself before him, he
hailed him as the expected mahdi, and in January, 910, he was
duly prayed for in the mosque of Kayrawan as "the Imam
'Obeid-Allah el-Mahdi, Commander of the Faithful.'"

The missionary's Berber proselytes were too numerous to

E., VOL. V. — 7

98 CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES

encourage resistance, and the few who indulged the luxury of
conscientious scruples were killed or imprisoned. El-Mahdi,
indeed, appeared so secure in power that he excited the jeal-
ousy of his discoverer.

Abu-Abdallah, the missionary, now found himself nobody,
where a month before he had been supreme. The Fatimite
restoration was to him only a means to an end; he had used
Obeid-Allah's title as an engine of revolution, intending to
proceed to the furthest lengths of his philosophy, to a complete
social and political anarchy, the destruction of Islam, commu-
nity of lands and women, and all the delight of unshackled
license. Instead of this, his creature had absorbed his power,
and all such designs were made void. He began to hatch trea-
son and to hint doubts as to the genuineness of the Mahdi, who,
as he truly represented, according to prophecy, ought to work
miracles and show other proofs of his divine mission. People
began to ask for a "sign." In reply, the Mahdi had the mis-
sionary murdered.

The first Fatimite caliph, though without experience, was so
vigorous a ruler that he could dispense with the dangerous sup-
port of his discoverer. He held the throne for a quarter of a
century and established his authority, more or less continuously,
over the Arab and Berber tribes and settled cities from the
frontier of Egypt to the province of Fez (Fas) in Morocco, re-
ceived the allegiance of the Mahometan governor of Sicily, and
twice despatched expeditions into Egypt, which he would prob-
ably have permanently conquered if he had not been hampered
by perpetual insurrections in Barbary. Distant governors, and
often whole tribes of Berbers, were constantly in revolt, and the
disastrous famine of 928-929, coupled with the Asiatic plague
which his troops had brought back with them from Egypt, led
to general disturbances and insurrections which fully occupied
the later years of his reign. The western provinces, from Ta-
hart and Nakur to Fez and beyond, frequently threw off all
show of allegiance. His authority was founded more on fear
than on religious enthusiasm, though zeal for the Alide cause
had its share in his original success. The new "Eastern doc-
trines," as they were called, were enforced at the sword's
point, and frightful examples were made of those who ventured

CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES 99

to tread in the old paths. Nor were the freethinkers of the
large towns, who shared the missionary's esoteric principles,
encouraged; for outwardly, at least, the Mahdi was strictly a
Moslem. When people at Kayrawan began to put in practice
the missionary's advanced theories, to scoff at all the rules of
Islam, to indulge in free love, pig's flesh, and wine, they were
sternly brought to order. The mysterious powers expected of
a mahdi were sedulously rumored among the credulous Ber-
bers, though no miracles were actually exhibited; and the
obedience of the conquered provinces was secured by horrible
outrages and atrocities, of which the terrified people dared not
provoke a repetition at the hands of the Mahdi's savage generals.

His eldest son Abul-Kasim, who had twice led expeditions
into Egypt, succeeded to the caliphate with the title of El-Kaim,
934-946. He began his reign with warlike vigor. He sent
out a fleet in 934 or 935, which harried the southern coast of
France, blockaded and took Genoa, and coasted along Cala-
bria, massacring and plundering, burning the shipping, and
carrying off slaves wherever it touched. At the same time he
despatched a third army against Egypt; but the firm hand of
the Ikshid now held the government, and his brother, Obeid-
Allah, with fifteen thousand horse, drove the enemy out of
Alexandria and gave them a crushing defeat on their way home.
But for the greater part of his reign El-Kaim was on the defen-
sive, fighting for existence against the usurpation of one Abu-
Yezid, who repudiated Shiism, cursed the Mahdi and his suc-
cessor, stirred up most of Morocco and Barbary against El-
Kaim, drove him out of his capital, and went near to putting
an end to the Fatimite caliphate.

It was only after seven years of uninterrupted civil war that
this formidable insurrection died out, under the firm but politic
management of the third caliph, El-Mansur (946-953), a brave
man who knew both when to strike and when to be generous.
Abu-Yezid was at last run to earth, and his body was skinned
and stuffed with straw, and exposed in a cage with a couple of
ludicrous apes as a warning to the disaffected.

The Fatimites so far wear a brutal and barbarous character.
They do not seem to have encouraged literature or learning;
but this is partly explained by the fact that culture belonged

ioo CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES

chiefly to the orthodox caliphate; and its learned men could
have no dealings with the heretical pretender. The city of
Kayrawan, which dates from the Arab conquest in the eighth
century, preserves the remains of some noble buildings, but of
their other capitals or royal residences no traces of art or archi-
tecture remain to bear witness to the taste of their founders.
Each began to decay as soon as its successor was built.

With the fourth caliph, however, El-Moizz, the conqueror of
Egypt, 953~975> the Fatimites entered upon a new phase.

El-Moizz was a man of politic temper, a born statesman,
able to grasp the conditions of success and to take advantage
of every point in his favor. He was also highly educated, and
not only wrote Arabic poetry and delighted in its literature, but
studied Greek, mastered Berber and Sudani dialects, and is
even said to have taught himself Slavonic in order to converse
with his slaves from Eastern Europe. His eloquence was such
as to move his audience to tears. To prudent statesmanship
he added a large generosity, and his love of justice was among
his noblest qualities. So far as outward acts could show, he
was a strict Moslem of the Shiah sect, and the statement of his
adversaries that he was really an atheist seems to rest merely
upon the belief that all the Fatimites adopted the esoteric doc-
trines of the Ismailian missionaries.

When he ascended the throne in April, 953, he had already
a policy, and he lost no time in carrying it into execution. He
first made a progress through his dominions, visiting each
town, investigating its needs, and providing for its peace and
prosperity. He bearded the rebels in their mountain fastnesses,
till they laid down their arms and fell at his feet. He con-
ciliated the chiefs and governors with presents and appoint-
ments, and was rewarded by their loyalty.

At the head of his ministers he set Gawhar "the Roman,"
a slave from the Eastern Empire, who had risen to the post of
secretary to the late Caliph, and was now by his son promoted
to the rank of ivassir and commander of the forces. He was sent
in 958 to bring the ever-refractory Maghreb (Morocco) to alle-
giance. The expedition was entirely successful, Sigilmasa and
Fez were taken, and Gawhar reached the shore of the Atlantic.

Jars of live fish and sea-weed reached the capital, and proved

CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES 101

to the Caliph that his empire touched the ocean, the "limitless
limit" of the world. All the African littoral, from the Atlantic
to the frontier of Egypt — with the single exception of Spanish
Ceuta — now peaceably admitted the sway of the Fatimite Ca-
liph.

The result was due partly to the exhaustion caused by the
long struggle during the preceding reigns, partly to the politic
concessions and personal influence of the able young ruler. He
was liberal and conciliatory toward different provinces, but to
the Arabs of the capital he wras severe. Kayrawan teemed with
disaffected folk, sheiks, and theologians bitterly hostile to the
heretical "orientalism" of the Fatimites, and always ready to
excite a tumult. Moizz was resolved to give them no chance,
and one of his repressive measures was the curfew. At sunset
a trumpet sounded, and anyone found abroad after that was
liable to lose not only his way, but his head. So long as they
were quiet, however, he used the people justly, and sought to
impress them in his favor. In a singular interview, recorded by
Makrisi, he exhibited himself to a deputation of sheiks, dressed
in the utmost simplicity, and seated before his writing materials
in a plain room, surrounded by books. He wished to disabuse
them of the idea that he led in private a life of luxury and self-
indulgence.

"You see what employs me when I am alone," he said; "I
read letters that come to me from the lands of the East and the
West, and answer them with my own hand; I deny myself all
the pleasures of the world, and I seek only to protect your lives,
multiply your children, shame your rivals, and daunt your ene-
mies." Then he gave them much good advice, and especially
recommended them to keep to one wife.

" One woman is enough for one man. If you straitly observe
what I have ordained," he concluded, "I trust that God will,
through you, procure our conquest of the East in like manner
as he has vouchsafed us the West."

The conquest of Egypt was indeed the aim of his life. To
rule over tumultuous Arab and Berber tribes in a poor country
formed no fit ambition for a man of his capacity. Egypt, its
wealth, its commerce, its great port, and its docile population
— these were his dream.

102 CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES

For two years he had been digging wells and building rest-
houses on the road to Alexandria. The West was now out-
wardly quiet, and between Egypt and any hope of succor from
the eastern caliphate stood the ravaging armies of the Karmatis.
Egypt itself was in helpless disorder. The great Kafur was
dead, and its nominal ruler was a child. Ibn-Furat, the wazir,
had made himself obnoxious to the people by arrests and ex-
tortions. The very soldiery was in revolt, and the Turkish re-
tainers of the court mutinied, plundered the wazir's palace, and
even opened negotiations with Moizz. Hoseyn, the nephew
of the Ikshid, attempted to restore public order, but after three
months of vacillating and unpopular government he returned to
his own province in Palestine to make terms with the Karmatis.
Famine, the result of the exceptionally low Nile of 967, added to
the misery of the country; plague, as usual, followed in the
steps of famine; over six hundred thousand people died in and
around Fustat, and the wretched inhabitants began in despair
to migrate to happier lands.

All these matters were fully reported to Moizz by the rene-
gade Jew Yakub Killis, a former favorite of Kafur, who had
been driven from Egypt by the jealous exactions of the wazir,
Ibn-Furat, and who was perfectly familiar with the political
and financial state of the Nile valley. His representations
confirmed the Fatimite Caliph's resolve; the Arab tribes were
summoned to his standard; an immense treasure was collected,
all of which was spent in the campaign; gratuities were lav-
ishly distributed to the army, and at the head of over one hun-
dred thousand men, all well mounted and armed, accom-
panied by a thousand camels and a mob of horses carrying
money, stores, and ammunition, Gawhar marched from Kayra-
wan in February, 969. The Caliph himself reviewed the troops.
The marshal kissed his hand and his horse's shoe. All the
princes, emirs, and courtiers passed reverently on foot before
the honored leader of the conquering army, who, as a last proof
of favor, received the gift of his master's own robes and charger.
The governors of all the towns on the route had orders to come
on foot to Gawhar's stirrup, and one of them vainly offered a
large bribe to be excused the indignity.

The approach of this overwhelming force filled the Egyp-

CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES 103

tian ministers with consternation, and they thought only of
obtaining favorable terms. A deputation of notables, headed
by Abu-Giafar Moslem, a sherij, or descendant of the Prophet's
family, waited upon Gawhar near Alexandria, and demanded
a capitulation. The general consented without reserve, and in
a conciliatory letter granted all they asked. But they had
reckoned without their host; the troops at Fustat would not
listen to such humiliation, and there was a strong war party
among the citizens, to which some of the ministers leaned.
The city prepared for resistance, and skirmishes took place
with Gawhar's army, which had meanwhile arrived at the
opposite town of Giza in July. Forcing the passage of the
river, with the help of some boats supplied by Egyptian soldiers,
the invaders fell upon the imposing army drawn up on the
other bank, and totally defeated them. The troops deserted
Fustat in a panic, and the women of the city, running out of
their houses, implored the sherif to intercede with the conqueror.

Gawhar, like his master, always disposed to a politic leni-
ency, renewed his former promises, and granted a complete
amnesty to all who submitted. The overjoyed populace cut off
the heads of some of the refractory leaders, in their enthusiasm,
and sent them to the camp in pleasing token of allegiance. A
herald, bearing a white flag, rode through the streets of Fustat
proclaiming the amnesty and forbidding pillage, and on August
the 5th the Fatimite army, with full pomp of drums and ban-
ners, entered the capital.

That very night Gawhar laid the foundations of a new city,
or rather fortified palace, destined for the reception of his sov-
ereign. He was encamped on the sandy waste which stretched
northeast of Fustat on the road to Heliopolis, and there, at a
distance of about a mile from the river, he marked out the
boundaries of the new capital. There were no buildings, save
the old " Convent of the Bones," nor any cultivation except the
beautiful park called " Kafur's Garden," to obstruct his plans.
A square, somewhat less than a mile each way, was pegged out
with poles, and the Maghrabi astrologers, in whom Moizz re-
posed extravagant faith, consulted together to determine the
auspicious moment for the opening ceremony. Bells were hung
on ropes from pole to pole, and at the signal of the sages their

104 CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES

ringing was to announce the precise moment when the laborers
were to turn the first sod. The calculations of the astrologers
were, however, anticipated by a raven, who perched on one of
the ropes and set the bells jingling, upon which every mattock
was struck into the earth, and the trenches were opened. It
was an unlucky hour; the planet Mars (El-Kahir) was in the
ascendant; but it could not be undone, and the place was ac-
cordingly named after the hostile planet, El-Kahira, "the Mar-
tial" or "Triumphant," in the hope that the sinister omen
might be turned to a triumphant issue. Cairo, as Kahira has
come to be called, may fairly be said to have outlived all astro-
logical prejudices. The name of the Abbasside caliph was at
once expunged from the Friday prayers at the old mosque of
Amr at Fustat; the black Abbasside robes were proscribed, and
the preacher, in pure white, recited the Khutba for the imam
Moizz, emir el-muminin, and invoked blessings on his ances-
tors Ali and Fatima and all their holy family. The call to
prayer from the minarets was adapted to Shiah taste. The
joyful news was sent to the Fatimite Caliph on swift dromeda-
ries, together with the heads of the slain. Coins were struck
with the special formulas of the Fatimite creed — "Ali is the
noblest of [God's] delegates, the wazir of the best of apostles";
"the Imam Maadd calls men to profess the unity of the Eter-
nal"— in addition to the usual dogmas of the Mahometan
faith. For two centuries the mosques and the mint proclaimed
the shibboleth of the Shiahs.

Gawhar set himself at once to restore tranquillity and alle-
viate the sufferings of the famine-stricken people. Moizz had
providently sent grain ships to relieve their distress, and as the
price of bread nevertheless remained at famine rates, Gawhar
publicly flogged the millers, established a central corn-exchange,
and compelled everyone to sell his corn there under the eye of
a government inspector. In spite of his efforts the famine
lasted for two years; plague spread alarmingly, insomuch that
the corpses could not be buried fast enough, and were thrown
into the Nile; and it was not till the winter of 971-972 that
plenty returned and the pest disappeared. As usual, the vice-
roy took a personal part in all public functions. Every Satur-
day he sat in court, assisted by the wazir Ibn-Furat, the cadi,

CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMTTES 105

and skilled lawyers, to hear causes and petitions and to admin-
ister justice. To secure impartiality, he appointed to every
department of state an Egyptian and a Maghrabi officer. His
firm and equitable rule insured peace and order; and the great
palace he was building, and the new mosque, the Azhar, which
he founded in 970 and finished in 972, not only added to the
beauty of the capital, but gave employment to innumerable
craftsmen.

The inhabitants of Egypt accepted the new regime with
their habitual phlegm. An Ikshidi officer in the Bashmur dis-
trict of Lower Egypt did, indeed, incite the people to rebellion,
'but his fate was not such as to encourage others. He was
chased out of Egypt, captured on the coast of Palestine, and
then, it is gravely recorded, he was given sesame oil to drink for
a month, till his skin stripped off, whereupon it was stuffed
with straw and hung up on a beam, as a reminder to him who
would be admonished. With this brief exception we read of no
riots, no sectarian risings, and the general surrender was com-
plete when the remaining partisans of the deposed dynasty, to the
number of five thousand, laid down their arms. An embassy
sent to George, King of Nubia, to invite him to embrace Islam,
and to exact the customary tribute, was received with courtesy,
and the money, but not the conversion, was arranged. The
holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the Higaz, where the gold of
Moizz had been prudently distributed some years before, re-
sponded to his generosity and success by proclaiming his su-
premacy in the mosques; the Hamdanide prince who held
Northern Syria paid similar homage to the Fatimite Caliph at
Aleppo, where the Abbassides had hitherto been recognized.
Southern Syria, however, which had formed part of the Ikshid's
kingdom, did not submit to the usurpers without a struggle.
Hoseyn was still independent at Ramla, and Gawhar's lieuten-
ant, Giafar ben Fellah, was obliged to give him battle. Hoseyn
was defeated and exposed bareheaded to the insults of the mob
at Fustat, to be finally sent, with the rest of the family of Ikshid,
to a Barbary jail. Damascus, the home of orthodoxy, was
taken by Giafar, not without a struggle, and the Fatimite doc-
trine was there published, to the indignation and disgust of the
Sunnite population.

io6 CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES

A worse plague than the Fatimite conquest soon afflicted
Syria. The Karmati leader, Hasan ben Ahmad, surnamed
El-Asam, finding the blackmail, which he had lately received
out of the revenues of Damascus, suddenly stopped, resolved
to extort it by force of arms. The Fatimites indeed sprang
from the same movement, and their founder professed the same
political and irreligious philosophy as Hasan himself; but this
did not stand in his way, and his knowledge of their origin made
him the less disposed to render homage to the sacred pretensions
of the new imams, whom he contemptuously designated as the
spawn of the quacks, charlatans, and the enemies of Islam.
He tried to enlist the support of the Abbasside Caliph, but El-
Muti replied that Fatimis and Karmatis were all one to him,
and he would have nothing to do with either. The Buweyhid
prince of Irak, however, supplied Hasan with arms and money;
Abu-Taghlib, the Hamdanide ruler of Rahba on the Eu-
phrates, contributed men; and, supported by the Arab tribes
of Okeyl, Tavy, and others, Hasan marched upon Damascus,
where the Fatimites were routed, and their general, Giafar,
killed. Moizz was forthwith publicly cursed from the pulpit in
the Syrian capital, to the qualified satisfaction of the inhabi-
tants, who had to pay handsomely for the pleasure.

Hasan next marched to Ramla, and thence, leaving the
Fatimite army of eleven thousand men shut up in Jaffa, in-
vaded Egypt. His troops surprised Kulzum at the head of the
Red Sea, and Farama (Pelusium), near the Mediterranean, at
the two ends of the Egyptian frontier. Tinnis declared against
the Fatimites, and Hasan appeared at Heliopolis in October,
971. Gawhar had already intrenched the new capital with a
deep ditch, leaving but one entrance, which he closed with an
iron gate. He armed the Egyptians as well as the African
troops, and a spy was set to watch the wazir Ibn-Furat, lest he
should be guilty of treachery. The sherifs of the family of
Ali were summoned to the camp, as hostages for the good be-
havior of the inhabitants. Meanwhile, the officers of the ene-
my were liberally tempted with bribes. Two months they lay
before Cairo, and then, after an indecisive engagement, Hasan
stormed the gate, forced his way across the ditch, and attacked
the Egyptians on their own ground. The result was a severe

CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES 107

repulse, and Hasan retreated, under cover of night, to Kulzum,
leaving his camp and baggage to be plundered by the Fatimites,
who were only balked of a sanguinary pursuit by the interven-
tion of night. The Egyptian volunteers displayed unexpected
valor in the fight, and many of the partisans of the late dynasty,
who were with the enemy, were made prisoners.

Thus the serious danger, which went near to cutting short
the Fatimite occupation of Egypt, was not only resolutely met,
but even turned into an advantage. There was no more in-
triguing on behalf of the Ikshidids ; Tinnis was recovered from
its temporary defection and occupied by the reinforcements
which Moizz had hurriedly despatched under Ibn-Ammar to
the succor of Gawhar; and the Karmati fleet, which attempted
to recover this fort, was obliged to slip anchor, abandoning
seven ships and five hundred prisoners. Jaffa, which still held
out resolutely against the besieging Arabs, was now relieved by
the despatch of African troops from Cairo, who brought back the
garrison, but did not dare to hold the post. The enemy fell back
upon Damascus, and the leaders fell out among themselves.

The Karmati chief was not crushed, however, by his defeat.
In the following year he was collecting ships and Arabs for a
fresh invasion. Gawhar, who had long urged his master to
come and protect his conquest, now pointed out the extreme
danger of a second attack from an enemy which had already
succeeded in boldly forcing his way to the gate of Cairo. Moizz
had delayed his journey, because he could not safely trust his
western provinces in his absence; but on the receipt of this
grave news, he appointed Yusuf Bulugin ben Zeyri, of the Ber-
ber tribe of Sanhaga, to act as his deputy in Barbary, left Sar-
daniya — the Fontainebleau of Kayrawan, as Mansuriya was
its Versailles — in November, 972, and making a leisurely prog-
ress, by way of Kabis, Tripolis, Agdabiya, and Barka, reached
Alexandria in the following May. Here the Caliph received a
deputation, consisting of the cadi of Fustat and other eminent
persons, whom he moved to tears by his eloquent and virtuous
discourse. A month later he was encamped in the gardens of
the monastery near Giza, where he was reverently welcomed by
his devoted servant, Gawhar, content to efface himself in his
master's shadow.

io8 CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES

The entry of the new Caliph into his new capital was a sol-
emn spectacle. With him were all his sons and brothers and
kinsfolk, and before him were borne the coffins of his ancestors.
Fustat was illuminated and decked for his reception ; but Moizz
would not enter the old capital of the usurping caliphs. He
crossed from Roda by Gawhar's new bridge, and proceeded
direct to the palace-city of Cairo. Here he threw himself on his
face and gave thanks to God.

There was yet an ordeal to be gone through before he could
regard himself as safe. Egypt was the home of many undoubted
sherifs or descendants of Ah", and these, headed by a representa-
tive of the distinguished Tabataba family, came boldly to ex-
amine his credentials. Moizz must prove his title to the holy
imamate inherited from Ali, to the satisfaction of these experts
in genealogy. According to the story, the Caliph called a great
assembly of the people, and invited the sherifs to appear; then,
half drawing his sword, he said:

"Here is my pedigree," and scattering gold among the
spectators, added, "and there is my proof."

It was perhaps the best argument he could produce. The
sherifs could only protest their entire satisfaction at this con-
vincing evidence; and it is at any rate certain that, whatever
they thought of the Caliph's claim, they did not contest it. The
capital was placarded with his name, and the praises of Ali and
Moizz were acclaimed by the people, who flocked to his first
public audience. Among the presents offered him, that of
Gawhar was especially splendid, and its costliness illustrates
the colossal wealth acquired by the Fatimites. It included five
hundred horses with saddles and bridles encrusted with gold,
amber, and precious stones; tents of silk and cloth of gold,
borne on Bactrian camels; dromedaries, mules, and camels of
burden; filigree coffers full of gold and silver vessels; gold-
mounted swords; caskets of chased silver containing precious
stones; a turban set with jewels, and nine hundred boxes filled
with samples of all the goods that Egypt produced.

GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY

TENTH TO FIFTEENTH CENTURY

LfiON GAUTIER

Writers on the history of chivalry are unable to refer its origin to any
definite time or place ; and even specific definition of chivalry is seldom
attempted by careful students. They rather give us, as does Gautier in
the picturesque account which follows, some recognized starting-point,
and for definition content themselves with characterization of the spirit
and aims of chivalry, analysis of its methods, and the story of its rise
and fall.

Chivalry was not an official institution that came into existence by the
decree of a sovereign. Although religious in its original elements and
impulses, there was nothing in its origin to remind us of the foundation
of a religious order. It would be useless to search for the place of its
birth or for the name of its founder. It was born everywhere at once,
and has been everywhere at the same time the natural effect of the same
aspirations and the same needs. " There was a moment when people
everywhere felt the necessity of tempering the ardor of old German
blood, and of giving to their ill-reguiated passions an ideal. Hence
chivalry 1 "

Yet chivalry arose from a German custom which was idealized by the
Christian church ; and chivalry was more an ideal than an institution.
It was "the Christian form of the military profession ; the knight was
the Christian soldier." True, the profession and mission of the church
meant the spread of peace and the hatred of war, she holding with her
Master that " they who take the sword shall perish with the sword."
Her thought was formulated by St. Augustine : " He who can think of
war and can support it without great sorrow is truly dead to human feel-
ings." * It is necessary," he says, " to submit to war, but to wish for
peace." The church did, however, look upon war as a divine means of
punishment and of expiation, for individuals and nations. And the elo-
quent Bossuet showed the church's view of war as the terrestrial prepa-
ration for the Kingdom of God, and described how empires fall upon
one another to form a foundation whereon to build the church. In the
light of such interpretations the church availed herself of the militant
auxiliary known as chivalry.

Along with the religious impulse that animated it, chivalry bore,
throughout its purer course, the character of knightliness which it re-
ceived from Teutonic sources. How the fine sentiments and ennobling

109

no GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY

customs of the Teutonic nations, particularly with respect to the gallan-
try and generosity of the male toward the female sex, grew into beautiful
combination with the rule of protecting the weak and defenceless every-
where, and how these elements were blended with the spirit of religious
devotion which entered into the organization and practices of chivalry,
forms one of the most fascinating features in the study of its develop-
ment; and this gentler side, no less than its sterner aspects, is faithfully
presented in the brilliant examination of Gautier. And the heroic senti-
ment and action which inspired and accomplished the sacred warfare of
the Crusades are not less admirably depicted in these pages ; while in his
summary of the decline of chivalry Gautier has perhaps never been sur-
passed for penetrating insight and lucid exposition.

'"PHERE is a sentence of Tacitus — the celebrated passage in
* the Get "mania — that refers to a German rite in which
we really find all the military elements of the future chivalry.
The scene took place beneath the shade of an old forest. The
barbarous tribe is assembled, and one feels that a solemn cere-
mony is in preparation. Into the midst of the assembly ad-
vances a very young man, whom you can picture to yourself
with sea-green eyes, long fair hair, and perhaps some tattooing.
A chief of the tribe is present, who without delay places gravely
in the hands of the young man a framea and a buckler. Fail-
ing a sovereign ruler, it is the father of the youth, or some
relative, who undertakes this delivery of weapons. "Such is
the 'virile robe' of these people," as Tacitus well puts it; "such
is the first honor of their youth. Till then the young man was
only one in a family; he becomes by this rite a member of
the Republic. Ante hoc domus pars videtur: mox ret publics.
This sword and buckler he will never abandon, for the Ger-
mans in all their acts, whether public or private, are always
armed. So, the ceremony finished, the assembly separates, and
the tribe reckons a miles — a warrior — the more. That is all ! "
The solemn handing of arms to the young German — such
is the first germ of chivalry which Christianity was one day
to animate into life. " Vestigium vetus creandi equites seu
milites" It is with reason that Sainte-Palaye comments in
the very same way upon the text of the Germania, and that a
scholar of our own days exclaims with more than scientific
exactness, "The true origin of miles is this bestowal of arms
which among the Germans marks the entry into civil life."

GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY in

No other origin will support the scrutiny of the critic, and
he will not find anyone now to support the theory of Roman
origin with Sainte-Marie, or that of the Arabian origin with
Beaumont. There only remains to explain in this place the
term knight (chevalier), but it is well known to be derived from
caballus, which primarily signifies a beast of burden, a pack-
horse, and has ended by signifying a war-horse. The knight,
also, has always preserved the name of miles in the Latin tongue
of the Middle Ages, in which chivalry is always called militia.
Nothing can be clearer than this.

We do not intend to go further, however, without replying
to two objections, which are not without weight, and which we
do not wish to leave behind us unanswered.

In a certain number of Latin books of the Middle Ages we
find, to describe chivalry, an expression which the "Roman-
ists" oppose triumphantly to us, and of which the Romish
origin cannot seriously be doubted. When it is intended to
signify that a knight has been created, it is stated that the
individual has been girt with the cingulum militare. Here we
find ourselves in full Roman parlance, and the word signified
certain terms which described admission into military service,
the release from this service, and the degradation of the le-
gionary. When St. Martin left the militia, his action was
qualified as solulio cinguli, and at all those who act like him
the insulting expression militaribus zonis discincti is cast.
The girdle which sustains the sword of the Roman officer —
cingulum zona, or rather cinctorium — as also the baldric, from
balteus, passed over the shoulder and was intended to support
the weapon of the common soldier. "You perceive quite
well," say our adversaries, "that we have to do with a Roman
costume." Two very simple observations will, perhaps, suf-
fice to get to the bottom of such a specious argument: The
first is that the Germans in early times wore, in imitation of the
Romans, "a wide belt ornamented with bosses of metal," a
baldric, by which their swords were suspended on the left side;
and the second is that the chroniclers of old days, who wrote
in Latin and affected the classic style, very naturally adopted
the word cingulum in all its acceptations, and made use of this
Latin paraphrasis — cingulo militari decorare — to express this

H2 GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY

solemn adoption of the sword. This evidently German custom
was always one of the principal rites of the collation of chivalry.
There is then nothing more in it than a somewhat vague remi-
niscence of a Roman custom with a very natural conjunction of
terms which has always been the habit of a literary people.

To sum up, the word is Roman, but the thing itself is Ger-
man. Between the militia of the Romans and the chivalry of
the Middle Ages there is really nothing in common but the
military profession considered generally. The official admit-
tance of the Roman soldier to an army hierarchically organ-
ized in no way resembled the admission of a new knight into a
sort of military college and the "pink of society." As we read
further the singularly primitive and barbarous ritual of the
service of knightly reception in the twelfth century, one is per-
suaded that the words exhale a German odor, and have nothing
Roman about them. But there is another argument, and one
which would appear decisive. The Roman legionary could
not, as a rule, withdraw from the service; he could not avoid
the baldric. The youthful knight of the Middle Ages, on the
contrary, was always free to arm himself or not as he pleased,
just as other cavaliers are at liberty to leave or join their ranks.
The principal characteristic of the knightly service, and one
which separates it most decidedly from the Roman militia,
was its freedom of action.

One very specious objection is made as regards feudalism,
which some clear-minded people obstinately confound with
chivalry. This was the favorite theory of Montalembert.
Now there are two kinds of feudalism, which the old feudal-
ists put down very clearly in two words now out of date —
"fiefs of dignity" and "fiefs simple." About the middle of the
ninth century, the dukes and counts made themselves inde-
pendent of the central power, and declared that people owed
the same allegiance to them as they did to the emperor or the
king. Such were the acts of the "fiefs of dignity," and we
may at once allow that they had nothing in common with
chivalry. The "fiefs simple," then, remained.

In the Merovingian period we find a certain number of
small proprietors, called vassi, commending themselves to
other men more powerful and more rich, who were called

"3

seniores. To his senior who made him a present of land the
•vassus owed assistance and fidelity. It is true that as early as
the reign of Charlemagne he followed him to war, but it must
be noted that it was to the emperor, to the central power, that
he actually rendered military service. There was nothing very
particular in this, but the time was approaching when things
would be altered. Toward the middle of the ninth century
we find a large number of men falling "on their knees" before
other men! What are they about? They are "recommend-
ing" themselves, but, in plainer terms, "Protect us and we
will be your men." And they added: "It is to you and to
you only that we intend in future to render military service;
but in exchange you must protect the land we possess — defend
what you will in time concede to us; and defend us ourselves."
These people on their knees were "vassals" at the feet of their
"lords"; and the fief was generally only a grant of land con-
ceded in exchange for military service.

Feudalism of this nature has nothing in common wfth
chivalry.

If we consider chivalry in fact as a kind of privileged body
into which men were received on certain conditions and with
a certain ritual, it is important to observe that every vassal is
not necessarily a cavalier. There were vassals who, with the
object of averting the cost of initiation or for other reasons,
remained damoiseaux, or pages, all their lives. The majority,
of course, did nothing of the kind; but all could do so, and a
great many did.

On the other hand we see conferred the dignity of chivalry
upon insignificant people who had never held fiefs, who owed
to no one any fealty, and to whom no one owed any.

We cannot repeat too often that it was not the cavalier (or
knight), it was the vassal who owed military service, or ost, to the
seigneur, or lord; and the service in curte or court: it was the
vassal, not the knight, who owed to the "lord" relief, "aid,"
homage.

The feudal system soon became hereditary. Chivalry, on
the contrary, has never been hereditary, and a special rite has
always been necessary to create a knight. In default of all
other arguments this would be sufficient.
E., VOL. v.— 8.

ii4 GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY

But if, instead of regarding chivalry as an institution, we
consider it as an ideal, the doubt is not really more admissible.
It is here that, in the eyes of a philosophic historian, chivalry is
clearly distinct from feudalism. If the western world in the
ninth century had not been feudalized, chivalry would never-
theless have come into existence; and, notwithstanding every-
thing, it would have come to light in Christendom; for chiv-
alry is nothing more than the Christianized form of military
service, the armed force in the service of the unarmed Truth;
and it was inevitable that at some time or other it must have
sprung, living and fully armed, from the brain of the church,
as Minerva did from the brain of Jupiter.

Feudalism, on the contrary, is not of Christian origin at all.
It is a particular form of government, and of society, which has
scarcely been less rigorous for the church than other forms of
society and government. Feudalism has disputed with the
church over and over again, while chivalry has protected her a
hundred times. Feudalism is force — chivalry is the brake.

Let us look at Godfrey de Bouillon. The fact that he owed
homage to any suzerain, the fact that he exacted service from
such and such vassals, are questions which concern feudal
rights, and have nothing to do with chivalry. But if I contem-
plate him in battle beneath the walls of Jerusalem; if I am a
spectator of his entry into the Holy City; if I see him ardent,
brave, powerful and pure, valiant and gentle, humble and
proud, refusing to wear the golden crown in the Holy City
where Jesus wore the crown of thorns, I am not then anxious —
I am not curious — to learn from whom he holds his fief, or to
know the names of his vassals; and I exclaim, "There is the
knight!" And how many knights, what chivalrous virtues,
have existed in the Christian world since feudalism has ceased
to exist!

The adoption of arms in the German fashion remains the
true origin of chivalry; and the Franks have handed down this
custom to us — a custom perpetuated to a comparatively mod-
ern period. This simple, almost rude rite so decidedly marked
the line of civil life in the code of manners of people of German
origin, that under the Carlovingians we still find numerous
traces of it. In 791 Louis, eldest son of Charlemagne, was only

GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY 115

thirteen years old, and yet he had worn the crown of Aquitaine
for three years upon his "baby brow." The king of the Franks
felt that it was time to bestow upon this child the military con-
secration which would more quickly assure him of the respect
of his people. He summoned him to Ingelheim, then to Rat-
isbon, and solemnly girded him with the sword which "makes
men." He did not trouble himself about the framea or the
buckler — the sword occupied the first place. It will retain it
for a long time.

In 838 at Kiersy we have a similar scene. This time it is
old Louis who, full of sadness and nigh to death, bestows upon
his son Charles, whom he loved so well, the "virile arms" —
that is to say, the sword. Then immediately afterward he put
upon his brow the crown of "Neustria." Charles was fifteen
years old.

These examples are not numerous, but their importance is
decisive, and they carry us to the time when the church came
to intervene positively in the education of the German miles.
The time was rough, and it is not easy to picture a more dis-
tracted period than that in the ninth and tenth centuries. The
great idea of the Roman Empire no longer, in the minds of the
people, coincided with the idea of the Frankish kingdom, but
rather inclined, so to speak, to the side of Germany, where it
tended to fix itself. Countries were on the way to be formed,
and people were asking to which country they could best be-
long. Independent kingdoms were founded which had no
precedents and were not destined to have a long life. The
Saracens were for the last time harassing the southern French
coasts, but it was not so with the Norman pirates, for they did
not cease for a single year to ravage the littoral which is now
represented by the Picardy and Normandy coasts, until the day
it became necessary to cede the greater part of it to them.
People were fighting everywhere more or less — family against
family — man to man. No road was safe, the churches were
burned, there was universal terror, and everyone sought pro-
tection. The king had no longer strength to resist anyone,
and the counts made themselves kings. The sun of the realm
was set, and one had to look at the stars for light. As soon as
the people perceived a strong man-at-arms, resolute, defiant,

u6 GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY

well established in his wooden keep, well fortified within the
lines of his hedge, behind his palisade of dead branches, or
within his barriers of planks; well posted on his hill, against
his rock, or on his hillock, and dominating all the surround-
ing country — as soon as they saw this each said to him, " I am
your man"; and all these weak ones grouped themselves
around the strong one, who next day proceeded to wage war
with his neighbors. Thence supervened a terrible series of
private wars. Everyone was fighting or thinking of fighting.

In addition to this, the still green memory of the grand fig-
ure of Charlemagne and the old empire, and I can't tell what
imperial splendors, were still felt in the air of great cities; all
hearts throbbed at the mere thought of the Saracens and the
Holy Sepulchre; the crusade gathered strength of preparation
far in advance, in the rage and indignation of all the Christian
race; all eyes were turned toward Jerusalem, and in the midst
of so many disbandments and so much darkness, the unity of
the church survived fallen majesty!

It was then, it was in that horrible hour — the decisive epoch
in our history — that the church undertook the education of
the Christian soldier; and it was at that time, by a resolute
step, she found the feudal baron in his rude wooden citadel, and
proposed to him an ideal. This ideal was chivalry!

That chivalry may be considered a great military confra-
ternity as well as an eighth sacrament, will be conceded. But,
before familiarizing themselves with these ideals, the rough
spirits of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries had to learn
the principles of them. The chivalrous ideal was not con-
ceived "all of a piece," and certainly it did not triumph with-
out sustained effort; so it was by degrees, and very slowly,
that the church succeeded in inoculating the almost animal
intelligence and the untrained minds of our ancestors with so
many virtues.

In the hands of the church, which wished to mould him
into a Christian knight, the feudal baron was a very intract-
able individual. No one could be more brutal or more bar-
barous than he. Our more ancient ballads — those which are
founded on the traditions of the ninth and tenth centuries —
supply us with a portrait which does not appear exagger-

GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY 117

ated. I know nothing in this sense more terrible than Raoul
de Cambrai, and the hero of this old poem would pass for a
type of a half-civilized savage. This Raoul was a kind of Sioux
or other redskin, who only wanted tattoo and feathers in his
hair to be complete. Even a redskin is a believer, or supersti-
tious to some extent, while Raoul defied the Deity himself.
The savage respects his mother, as a rule; but Raoul laughed at
his mother, who cursed him. Behold him as he invaded the
Vermandois, contrary to all the rights of legitimate heirs. He
pillaged, burned, and slew in all directions: he was everywhere
pitiless, cruel, horrible. But at Origni he appears in all his
ferocity. " You will erect my tent in the church, you will make
my bed before the altar, and put my hawks on the golden cruci-
fix." Now that church belonged to a convent. What did that
signify to him ? He burned the convent, he burned the church,
he burned the nuns! Among them was the mother of his most
faithful servitor, Bernier — his most devoted companion and
friend — almost his brother! but he burned her with the others.
Then, when the flames were still burning, he sat himself down,
on a fast-day, to feast amid the scenes of his sanguinary exploits
— defying God and man, his hands steeped in blood, his face
lifted to heaven. That was the kind of soldier, the savage of the
tenth century, whom the church had to educate!

Unfortunately this Raoul de Cambrai is not a unique speci-
men; he was not the only one who had uttered this fero-
cious speech: "I shall not be happy until I see your heart cut
out of your body." Aubri de Bourguignon was not less cruel,
and took no trouble to curb his passions. Had he the right to
massacre? He knew nothing about that, but meanwhile he
continued to kill. "Bah!" he would say, "it is always an
enemy the less." On one occasion he slew his four cousins.
He was as sensual as cruel. His thick-skinned savagery did
not appear to feel either shame or remorse; he was strong and
had a weighty hand — that was sufficient. Ogier was scarcely
any better, but notwithstanding all the glory attaching to his
name, I know nothing more saddening than the final episode
of the rude poem attributed to Raimbert of Paris. The son
of Ogier, Baudouinet, had been slain by the son of Charle-
magne, who called himself Chariot! Ogier did nothing but

n8 GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY

breathe vengeance, and would not agree to assist Christendom
against the Saracen invaders unless the unfortunate Chariot
was delivered to him. He wanted to kill him, he determined
to kill him, and he rejoiced over it in anticipation. In vain
did Chariot humble himself before this brute, and endeavor
to pacify him by the sincerity of his repentance; in vain the
old Emperor himself prayed most earnestly to God; in vain
the venerable Naimes, the Nestor of our ballads, offered to serve
Ogier all the rest of his life, and begged the Dane "not to forget
the Saviour, who was born of the Virgin at Bethlehem." All
their devotion and prayers were unavailing. Ogier, pitiless,
placed one of his heavy hands on the youthful head, and with
the other drew his sword, his terrible sword " Courtain." Noth-
ing less than the intervention of an angel from heaven could
have put an end to this terrible scene in which all the savagery
of the German forests was displayed.

The majority of these early heroes had no other shibboleth
than "I am going to separate the head from the trunk!" It
was their war-cry. But if you desire something more fright-
ful still, something more "primitive," you have only to open
the Loherains at hazard, and read a few stanzas of that raging
ballad of "derring-do," and you will almost fancy you are
perusing one of those pages in which Livingstone describes in
such indignant terms the manners of some tribe in Central
Africa. Read this: "Begue struck Isore upon his black hel-
met through the golden circlet, cutting him to the chine; then
he plunged into his body his sword Flamberge with the golden
hilt; took the heart out with both hands, and threw it, still
warm, at the head of William, saying, 'There is your cousin's
heart; you can salt and roast it.'" Here words fail us; it
would be too tame to say with Goedecke, "These heroes act
like the forces of nature, in the manner of the hurricane which
knows no pity." We must use more indignant terms than
these, for we are truly amid cannibals. Once again we say,
there was the warrior, there was the savage whom the church
had to elevate and educate!

Such is the point of departure of this wonderful progress;
such are the refractory elements out of which chivalry and
the knight have been fashioned.

GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY 119

The point of departure is Raoul of Cambrai burning Origni.
The point of arrival is Girard of Roussillon failing one day at
the feet of an old priest and expiating his former pride by
twenty-two years of penitence. These two episodes embrace
many centuries between them.

A very interesting study might be made of the gradual trans-
formation from the redskin to the knight; it might be shown
how, and at what period of history, each of the virtues of chiv-
alry penetrated victoriously into the undisciplined souls of these
brutal warriors who were our ancestors; it might be deter-
mined at what moment the church became strong enough to
impose upon our knights the great duties of defending it and
of loving one another.

This victory was attained in a certain number of cases
undoubtedly toward the end of the eleventh century: and the
knight appears to us perfected, finished, radiant, in the most
ancient edition of the Chanson oj Roland, which is considered
to have been produced between 1066 and 1095.

It is scarcely necessary to observe that chivalry was no
longer in course of establishment when Pope Urban II threw
with a powerful hand the whole of the Christian West upon the
East, where the Tomb of Christ was in possession of the Infidel.

In legendary lore the embodiment of chivalry is Roland:
in history it is Godfrey de Bouillon. There are no more wor-
thy names than these.

The decadence of chivalry — and when one is speaking of
human institutions, sooner or later this word must be used —
perhaps set in sooner than historians can believe. We need
not attach too much importance to the grumblings of certain
poets, who complain of their time with an evidently exag-
gerated bitterness, and we do not care for our own part to take
literally the testimony of the unknown author of La Vie de Saint •
Alexis, who exclaims — about the middle of the eleventh cen-
tury— that everything is degenerate and all is lost! Thus:
"In olden tunes the world was good. Justice and love were
springs of action in it. People then had faith, which has dis-
appeared from amongst us. The world is entirely changed.
The world has lost its healthy color. It is paie — it has grown
old. It is growing worse, and will soon cease altogether."

120 GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY

The poet exaggerates in a very singular manner the evil
which he perceives around him, and one might aver that, far
from bordering upon old age, chivalry was then almost in the
very zenith of its glory. The twelfth century was its apogee,
and it was not until the thirteenth that it manifested the first
symptoms of decay.

"Li maus est moult avant," exclaims the author of Godfrey
de Bouillon, and he adds, sadly, " Tos li biens est fin/s."

He was more correct in speaking thus than was the author
of Saint Alexis in his complainings, for the decadence of chiv-
alry actually commenced in his time. And it is not unreason-
able to inquire into the causes of its decay.

The Romance of the Round Table, which in the opinion
of prepossessed or thoughtless critics appears so profoundly
chivalrous, may be considered one of the works which hast-
ened the downfall of chivalry. We are aware that by this
seeming paradox we shall probably scandalize some of our
readers, who look upon these adventurous cavaliers as veritable
knights. What does it matter? Avienne que puet. The he-
roes of our chansons de geste are really the authorized repre-
sentatives and types of the society of their time, and not those
fine adventure-seeking individuals who have been so brilliantly
sketched by the pencil of Cre'tien de Troyes.

It is true, however, that this charming and delicate spirit did
not give, in his works, an accurate idea of his century and
generation. We do not say that he embellished all he touched,
but only that he enlivened it. Notwithstanding all that one
could say about it, this school introduced the old Gaelic spirit
into a poetry which had been till then chiefly Christian or
German. Our epic poems are of German origin, and the
Table Round is of Celtic origin. Sensual and light, witty and
delicate, descriptive and charming, these pleasing romances
are never masculine, and become too often effeminate and
effeminating. They sing always, or nearly so, the same theme.
By lovely pasturages clothed with beautiful flowers, the air full
of birds, a young knight proceeds in search of the unknown,
and through a series of adventures whose only fault is that they
resemble one another somewhat too closely.

We find insolent defiances, magnificent duels, enchanted

GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY 121

castles, tender love-scenes, mysterious talismans. The mar-
vellous mingles with the supernatural, magicians with saints,
fairies with angels. The whole is written in a style essentially
French, and it must be confessed in clear, polished, and chas-
tened language — perfect!

But we must not forget, as we said just now, that this poetry,
so greatly attractive, began as early as the twelfth century to
be the mode universally; and let us not forget that it was at
the same period that the Percevalde Gallois and Aliscans,
Cleomad^s, and the Couronnement Looys were written. The
two schools have coexisted for many centuries: both camps
have enjoyed the favor of the public. But in such a struggle
it was all too easy to decide to which of them the victory would
eventually incline. The ladies decided it, and no doubt the
greater number of them wept over the perusal of Erec or Enid
more than over that of the Covenant Vivien or Raoul de Cam-
brai.

When the grand century of the Middle Ages had closed,
when the blatant thirteenth century commenced, the senti-
mental had already gained the advantage over our old classic
chansons; and the new school, the romantic set of the Table
Round, triumphed! Unfortunately, they also triumphed in
their manners; and they were the knights of the Round Table
who, with the Valois, seated themselves upon the throne of
France.

In this way temerity replaced true courage; so good, polite
manners replaced heroic rudeness; so foolish generosity re-
placed the charitable austerity of the early chivalry. It was
the love of the unforeseen even in the military art; the rage for
adventure — even in politics. We know whither this strategy
and these theatrical politics led us, and that Joan of Arc and
Providence were required to drag us out of the consequences.

The other causes of the decadence of the spirit of chivalry
are more difficult to determine. There is one of them which
has not, perhaps, been sufficiently brought to light, and this is —
will it be believed? — the exdevelopment of certain orders of
chivalry! This statement requires some explanation.

We must confess that we are enthusiastic, passionate ad-
mirers of these grand military orders which were formed at the

122 GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY

commencement of the twelfth century. There have never
been their like in the world, and it was only given to Chris-
tianity to display to us such a spectacle. To give to one single
soul the double ideal of the soldier and the monk, to impose
upon him this double charge, to fix in one these two condi-
tions and in one only these two duties, to cause to spring from
the earth I cannot tell how many thousands of men who vol-
untarily accepted this burden, and who were not crushed by
it — that is a problem which one might have been pardoned for
thinking insoluble. We have not sufficiently considered it.
We have not pictured to ourselves with sufficient vividness the
Templars and the Hospitallers in the midst of one of those
great battles in the Holy Land in which the fate of the world
was in the balance.

No: painters have not sufficiently portrayed them in the
arid plains of Asia forming an incomparable squadron in the
midst of the battle. One might talk forever and yet not say
too much about the charge of the Cuirassiers at Reichshoffen;
but how many times did the Hospitaller knights and the
Templars charge in similar fashion ? Those soldier-monks, in
truth, invented a new idea of courage. Unfortunately they were
not always fighting, and peace troubled some of them. They
became too rich, and their riches lowered them in the eyes of
men and before heaven. We do not intend to adopt all the
calumnies which have been circulated concerning the Tem-
plars, but it is difficult not to admit that many of these accusa-
tions had some foundation. The Hospitallers, at any rate,
have given no ground for such attacks. They, thank heaven,
remained undefiled, if not poor, and were an honor to that
chivalry which others had compromised and emasculated.

But when all is said, that which best became chivalry, the
spice which preserved it the most surely, was poverty!

Love of riches had not only attacked the chivalrous orders,
but in a very short space of time all knights caught the infection.
Sensuality and enjoyment had penetrated into their castles.
"Scarcely had they received the knightly baldric before they
commenced to break the commandments and to pillage the
poor. When it became necessary to go to war, their sumpter-
horses were laden with wine, and not with weapons; with

GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY 123

leathern bottles instead of swords; with spits instead of lances.
One might have fancied, in truth, that they were going out to
dinner, and not to fight. It is true their shields were beauti-
fully gilt, but they were kept in a virgin and unused condition.
Chivalrous combats were represented upon their bucklers and
their saddles, certainly; but that was all!"

Now who is it who writes thus? It is not, as one might
fancy, an author of the fifteenth century — it is a writer of the
twelfth; and the greatest satirist, somewhat excessive and
unjust hi his statements, the Christian Juvenal whom we have
just quoted, was none other than Peter of Blois.

A hundred other witnesses might be cited in support of these
indignant words. But if there is some exaggeration in them,
we are compelled to confess that there is a considerable sub-
stratum of truth also.

These abuses — which wealth engendered, which more than
one poet has stigmatized — attracted, in the fourteenth century,
the attention of an important individual, a person whose name
occupies a worthy place in literature and history. Philip of
Mezieres, chancellor of Cyprus under Peter of Lusignan, was
a true knight, who one day conceived the idea of reforming
chivalry. Now the way he found most feasible in accom-
plishing his object, in arriving at such a difficult and complex
reform, was to found a new order of chivalry himself, to which
he gave the high-sounding title of "the Chivalry of the Pas-
sion of Christ."

The decadence of chivalry is attested, alas! by the very
character of the reformers by which this well-meaning Utopian
attempted to oppose it. The good knight complains of the great
advances of sensuality, and permits and advises the marriage
of all knights. He complains of the accursed riches which the
Hospitallers themselves were putting to a bad use, and forbade
them in his Institutions; but nevertheless the luxurious habits
of his time had an influence upon his mind, and he permitted
his knights to wear the most extravagant costumes, and the
dignitaries of his order to adopt the most high-sounding titles.
There was something mystical in all this conception, and some-
thing theatrical in all this agency. It is hardly necessary to add
that the "Chivalry of the Passion" was only a beautiful dream,

124 GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY

originating in a generous mind. Notwithstanding the adher-
ence of some brilliant personages, the order never attained to
more than a theoretical organization, and had only a fictitious
foundation. The idea of the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre
from the Infidel was hardly the object of the fifteenth-century
chivalry; for the struggle between France and England then
was engaging the most courageous warriors and the most
practised swords. Decay hurried on apace!

This was not the only cause of such a fatal falling away.
The portals of chivalry had been opened to too many unworthy
candidates. It had been made vulgar! In consequence of
having become so cheap the grand title of "knight" was de-
graded. Eustace Deschamps, in his fine, straightforward way,
states the scandal boldly and "lashes" it with his tongue. He
says: "Picture to yourself the fact that the degree of knight-
hood is about to be conferred now upon babies of eight and ten
years old."

Well might this excellent man exclaim in another place:
"Disorders always go on gathering strength, and even incom-
parable knights like Du Guesclin and Bayard cannot arrest the
fatal course of the institution toward ruin." Chivalry was
destined to disappear.

It is very important that one should make one's self acquainted
with the true character of such a downfall. France and Eng-
land in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries still boasted many
high-bred knights. They exchanged the most superb de-
fiances, the most audacious challenges, and proceeded from
one country to another to run each other through the body
proudly. The Beaumanoirs, who drank their blood, abounded.
It was a question who would engage himself in the most incred-
ible pranks; who would commit the most daring folly! They
tell us afterward of the beautiful passages of arms, the grand
feats performed, and the inimitable Froissart is the most charm-
ing of all these narrators, who make their readers as chivalrous
as themselves.

But we must tell everything: among these knights in beau-
tiful armor there was a band of adventurers who never ob-
served, and who could not understand, certain commandments
of the ancient chivalry. The laxity of luxury had everywhere

GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY 125

replaced the rigorous enactments of the old manliness, and
even warriors themselves loved their ease too much. The re-
ligious sentiment was not the dominant one in their minds, in
which the idea of a crusade now never entered. They had not
sufficient respect for the weakness of the Church nor for other
failings. They no longer felt themselves the champions of the
good and the enemies of evil. Their sense of justice had
become warped, as had love for their great native land.

Again, what they termed "the license of camps" had grown
very much worse; and we know in what condition Joan of Arc
found the army of the King. Blasphemy and ribaldry in every
quarter. The noble girl swept away these pests, but the effect
of her action was not long-lived. She was the person to rees-
tablish chivalry, which in her found the purity of its now-effaced
type; but she died too soon, and had not sufficient imitators.

There were, after her time, many chivalrous souls, and,
thank heaven, there are still some among us; but the old
institution is no longer with us. The events which we have
had the misfortune to witness do not give us any ground to
hope that chivalry, extinct and dead, will rise again to-morrow
to light and life.

In St. Louis' time, caricature and parody — they were low-
class forces, but forces nevertheless — had already commenced
the work of destruction. We are in possession of an abomi-
nable little poem of the thirteenth century, which is nothing
but a scatological pamphlet directed against chivalry. This
ignoble Audigier, the author of which is the basest of men, is
not the only attack which one may disinter from amid the
literature of that period. If one wishes to draw up a really
complete list it would be necessary to include the fabliaux —
the Renart and the Rose, which constitute the most anti-chiv-
alrous — I had nearly written the most Voltairian — works that I
am acquainted with. The thread is easy enough to follow
from the twelfth century down to the author of Don Quixote —
which I do not confound with its infamous predecessors — to
Cervantes, whose work has been fatal, but whose mind was
elevated.

However that may be, parody and the parodists were them-
selves a cause of decay. They weakened morals. Gallic-like,

126 GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY

they popularized little bourgeois sentiments, narrow-minded,
satirical sentiments; they inoculated manly souls with contempt
for such great things as one performs disinterestedly. This
disdain is a sure element of decay, and we may regard it as an
announcement of death.

Against the knights who, here and there, showed them-
selves unworthy and degenerate, was put in practice the ter-
rible apparatus of degradation. Modern historians of chiv-
alry have not failed to describe in detail all the rites of this
solemn punishment, and we have presented to us a scene which
is well calculated to excite the imagination of the most matter-
of-fact, and to make the most timid heart swell.

The knight judicially condemned to submit to this shame
was first conducted to a scaffold, where they broke or trod
under foot all his weapons. He saw his shield, with device
effaced, turned upside down and trailed in the mud. Priests,
after reciting prayers for the vigil of the dead, pronounced over
his head the psalm, "Deus laudem meam" which contains
terrible maledictions against traitors. The herald of arms
who carried out this sentence took from the hands of the pur-
suivant of arms a basin full of dirty water, and threw it all ovei
the head of the recreant knight in order to wash away the sacred
character which had been conferred upon him by the acco-
lade. The guilty one, degraded in this way, was subsequently
thrown upon a hurdle, or upon a stretcher, covered with a
mortuary cloak, and finally carried to the church, where they
repeated the same prayers and the same ceremonies as for the
dead.

This was really terrible, even if somewhat theatrical, and it
is easy to see that this complicated ritual contained only a very
few ancient elements. In the twelfth century the ceremonial
of degradation was infinitely more simple. The spurs were
hacked off close to the heels of the guilty knight. Nothing
could be more summary or more significant. Such a person
was publicly denounced as unworthy to ride on horseback,
and consequently quite unworthy to be a knight. The more
ancient and chivalrous, the less theatrical is it. It is so in many
other institutions in the histories of all nations.

That such a penalty may have prevented a certain number

GROWTH AND DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY 127

of treasons and forfeitures we willingly admit, but one cannot
expect it to preserve all the whole body of chivalry from that
decadence from which no institution of human establishment
can escape.

Notwithstanding inevitable weaknesses and accidents, the
Decalogue of Chivalry has none the less been regnant in some
millions of souls which it has made pure and great. These
ten commandments have been the rules and the reins of youth-
ful generations, who without them would have been wild and
undisciplined. This legislation, in fact — which, to tell the truth,
is only one of the chapters of the great Catholic Code — has
raised the moral level of humanity.

Besides, chivalry is not yet quite dead. No doubt, the
ritual of chivalry, the solemn reception, the order itself, and the
ancient oaths, no longer exist. No doubt, among these grand
commandments there are many which are known only to the
erudite, and which the world is unacquainted with. The
Catholic Faith is no longer the essence of modern chivalry;
the Church is no longer seated on the throne around which the
old knights stand with their drawn swords ; Islam is no longer
the hereditary enemy; we have another which threatens us
nearer home; widows and orphans have need rather of the
tongues of advocates than of the iron weapon of the knights;
there are no more duties toward liege-lords to be fulfilled;
and we even do not want any kind of superior lord at all; lar-
gesse is now confounded with charity; and the becoming hatred
of evil-doing is no longer our chief, our best, passion!

But whatever we may do there still remains to us, in the
marrow, a certain leaven of chivalry which preserves us from
death. There are still in the world an immense number of
fine souls — strong and upright souls — who hate all that is
small and mean, who know and who practise all the delicate
promptings of honor, and who prefer death to an unworthy
action or to a lie !

That is what we owe to chivalry, that is what it has be-
queathed to us. On the day when these last vestiges of such
a grand past are effaced from our souls — we shall cease to
exist!

CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT

INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO
RUSSIA

AJX 988-1015

A. N. MOURAVIEFF

According to early Greek and Roman writers, Russia in their time
was inhabited by Scythians and Sarmatians. The Greeks established
commercial relations with the most southerly tribes. In the fourth and
fifth centuries, during the migrations of the nations, Russia was invaded
by Goths, Alans, Huns, Avars, and Bulgarians, who, however, made no
settlements. They were followed by the Slavs, who are looked upon as
the Sarmatians already mentioned.

The Slavs settled as far north as the upper Volga. The chief settle-
ments were Novgorod and Kieff, which became the capitals of inde-
pendent principalities, Novgorod especially becoming an important com-
mercial and trading centre.

The commerce northward through the Baltic was subject to the
attacks of the Scandinavian Northmen, known as Varangians. They
demanded tribute of the Slavs, and on its refusal attacked and captured
Novgorod. A little later Novgorod established its independence as a
republic; but within a few years we find this section controlled by a
Varangian tribe from Rus, a district of Sweden. This tribe was led by
three brothers, Ruric the Peaceful, Sineous the Victorious, and Trouvor
the Faithful, who settled and ruled in different parts of the country.

In 864, on the death of his brothers, Ruric consolidated their territo-
ries with his, assumed the title of grand prince, peaceably took posses-
sion of Novgorod and made it his capital, naming the country Russia,
after his native place.

With the advent of the Varangians the authentic history of Russia
begins. The millenary of that event was celebrated in 1862 at Novgorod,
as the foundation of the Russian empire.

Ruric died in 879. In the next hundred years his successors con-
quered many neighboring lands and added them to the empire. Kieff
became the capital. Numerous invasions into the territory of the Greek
empire were made and Constantinople was frequently attacked, resulting
sometimes in repulse, and at others in exacting heavy tribute from the
Eastern Emperor. Treaties were executed and a gradual growth of

CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT 129

commerce and intercourse between the Greeks and Russians took place.
Olga, the famous and popular widow of Ruric's son, Igor, became a
Christian and was baptized in Constantinople in 955, and during the rest
of her life lent her powerful influence to the spread of the faith. And
though her son, the emperor Sviatoslaf, remained a pagan throughout
his reign, Christianity continued to grow, and the general Christianiza-
tion of Russia during the reign of her grandson, Vladimir, was aided
materially by the great example of the good queen Olga.

In 970 Sviatoslaf divided his empire among his three sons, laropolk I,
Oleg, and Vladimir. After the death of Sviatoslaf in 972 civil war began
between the three brothers. Oleg was killed and Vladimir fled to Swe-
den. In 980, supported by a force of Varangians, Vladimir returned,
captured Novgorod and Kieff, and put laropolk to death. Under Vladi-
mir, later known as Vladimir the Great, Russia increased in importance,
and civilization was enhanced by the spread of Christianity through the
missionary efforts of the Greek Church, now the Holy, Orthodox, Catho-
lic, Apostolic, Oriental Church. It is, therefore, not strange that the
Russian prelates were distinguished by their loyalty and fidelity to the
Greek Church throughout the continued conflicts between it and the Ro-
man Church which resulted in their separation in 1054.

In the fifteenth century, with the consent of the patriarchate of Con-
stantinople, the Orthodox Graeco-Russian Church assumed national inde-
pendence, and became the state church; and after the establishment of
Mahometanism in Constantinople, since its capture by Mahomet II in
1453, the reigning Czar of Russia has come to be regarded not only as
the temporal and spiritual head of the Greek Church by the great mass
of adherents which form the bulk of the population in Russia, but also
as the champion of all the followers of the church in Greece and through-
out the orient.

The story of the introduction of Christianity into Russia presents an
interesting psychological study of the growth and development of the
religious sentiment inherent hi man — be he never so brutalized and
barbarous. Notwithstanding its display of national pride and bias, par-
donable in a native historian, Mouravieff' s account is exceedingly in-
teresting.

HTHE Russian Church, like the other orthodox churches of
the East, had an apostle for its founder. St. Andrew, the
first called of the Twelve, hailed with his blessing long before-
hand the destined introduction of Christianity into our country;
ascending up and penetrating by the Dnieper into the deserts
of Scythia, he planted the first cross on the hills of Kieff. "See
you," said he to his disciples, "these hills? On these hills shall
shine the light of divine grace. There shall be here a great city,
and God shall have hi it many churches to his name."
E., VOL. v.— 9.

130 CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT

Such are the words of the holy Nestor, the monk and an-
nalist of the Pechersky monastery, that point from whence
Christian Russia has sprung.

But it was only after an interval of nine centuries that the
rays of divine light beamed upon Russia from the walls of
Byzantium, in which city the same apostle, St. Andrew, had
appointed Stachys to be the first bishop, and so committed, as
it were, to him and to his successors, in the spirit of prescience,
the charge of that wide region in which he had himself preached
Christ. Hence the indissoluble connection of the Russian with
the Greek Church, and the dependence of her metropolitans
during six centuries upon the patriarchal throne of Constanti-
nople, until, with its consent, she obtained her own equality
and independence in that which was accorded to her native
primates.

The Bulgarians of the Danube, the Moravians, and the
Slavonians of Illyria had been already enlightened by holy
baptism about the middle of the ninth century, during the reign
of the Greek emperor Michael and the patriarchate of the
illustrious Photius. St. Cyril and St. Methodius, two learned
Greek brothers, translated into the Slavonic the New Testa-
ment and the books used in divine service, and according to
some accounts even the whole Bible.

This translation of the Word of God became afterward a
most blessed instrument for the conversion of the Russians, for
the missionaries were by it enabled to expound the truths of
the Gospel to the heathens in their native dialect, and so win for
them a readier entrance to their hearts.

Oskold and Dir, two princes of Kieff and the companions of
Ruric, were the first of the Russians who embraced Christianity.
In the year 866 they made their appearance in armed vessels
before the walls of Constantinople when the Emperor was ab-
sent, and threw the Greek capital into no little alarm and con-
fusion. Tradition reports that "The patriarch Photius took
the virginal robe of the Mother of God from the Blachern
Church, and plunged it beneath the waves of the strait, when
the sea immediately boiled up from underneath and wrecked
the vessels of the heathen. Struck with awe, they believed in
that God who had smitten them, and became the first-fruits of

CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT 131

their people to the Lord." The hymn of victory of the Greek
Church, "To the protecting Conductress," in honor of the most
holy Virgin, has remained a memorial of this triumph, and even
now concludes the Office for the First Hour in the daily Mat-
ins; for that was, indeed, the first hour of salvation to the
land of Russia.

It is probable that on their return to their own country the
princes of Kieff sowed there the seeds of Christianity; for,
eighty years afterward, on occasion of a conference for peace
between the prince Igor and certain Byzantine ambassadors,
we find mention already of a "Church of the Prophet Elias" in
Kieff where the Christian Varangians swore to the observance
of the treaty. Constantine Porphyrogenitus and other Greek
annalists even relate that in the lifetime of Oskold there was a
bishop sent to the Russians by the emperor Basil the Mace-
donian, and the patriarch St. Ignatius, and that he made many
converts, chiefly "in consequence of the miraculous preserva-
tion of a volume of the Gospels, which was thrown publicly
into the flames and taken out after some time unconsumed."
Also in Condinus, Catalogue of Sees Subject to the Patriarch of
Constantinople, the metropolitical see of Russia appears as early
as the year 891.

Lastly, it is certain that many of the Varangians who served
in the imperial bodyguard were Christians, and that the Greek
sovereigns never lost sight of any opportunity of converting
them to their own faith, by which they hoped to soften their
savage manners. When the emperor Leo was concluding a
peace with Oleg, he showed not only his own treasures to the
ambassadors of the Russian prince, but also the splendor of the
churches, the holy relics, the precious icons, and the "Instru-
ments of the Passion of our Lord," if by any means they might
catch from them the spirit of the faith.

, Some such influences as these, while Christianity as yet was
only struggling for an uncertain existence at Kieff, produced in
good time their effect on the wisest of the daughters of the
Slavonians, the widowed princess Olga, who governed Russia
during the minority of her son Sviatoslaf. She undertook
a voyage to Constantinople for no other end than to obtain a
knowledge of the true God, and there she received baptism at

1 32 CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT

the hands of the patriarch Polyeuctes; the emperor Constantine
Porphyrogenitus himself, who admired her wisdom, being her
godfather. Nestor draws an affecting picture of the patriarch
foretelling to the newly illumined princess the blessings which
were to descend by her means on future generations of the
Russians, while Olga, now become Helena by baptism — that
she might resemble both in name and deed the mother of Con-
stantine the Great — stood meekly bowing down her head and
drinking in, as a sponge that is thirsty of moisture, the instruc-
tions of the prelate concerning the canons of the Church, fasting,
prayer, almsgiving, and continence, all which she observed with
exactness on her return to her own country.

Although, in spite of all her entreaties, the fierce and warlike
prince Sviatoslaf persisted in refusing to humble his proud
heart under the meek yoke of Christ, he had still so much affec-
tion for his mother as not to persecute such as agreed with her
in religion, but even to allow them freely to make open profes-
sion of their faith under the protection of that princess. He
confided his children to her care during his incessant military
expeditions, and so enabled her to confirm the saving impres-
sions of Christianity among the people who respected her, and
to instil them into the mind of her young grandson Vladimir;
for nothing sinks so deep into the heart as the simple and affec-
tionate words of a mother. The princess had with her a priest
named Gregory, whom she had brought from Constantinople,
and by him she was buried after her death in the spot which
she had herself appointed, without any of the usual pagan cere-
monies. The people, by whom she had been surnamed "the
Wise" during life, began to bless her for a saint after her death,
when they came themselves to follow the example of this " Morn-
ing Star" which had risen and gone before to lead Russia into
the path of salvation.

Nowhere has Christianity ever been less persecuted at its
first introduction than in our own country. The Chronicle
speaks of only two Christian martyrs, the Varangians Theo-
dore and John, who were put to death by the fury of the people
because one of them, from natural affection, had refused to
give up his son when he had been devoted by the prince Vladi-
mir to be offered as a sacrifice to Peroun.

CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT 133

Probably the very zeal of this prince for the heathen deities,
to whom he set up statues and multiplied altars, may have
inspired the neighboring nations with the desire of converting
so powerful a ruler to their respective creeds ; and thus his blind
impulse toward the Deity, which was unknown to him, received
a true direction. The Mahometan Bulgarians were the first
to send ambassadors to him, with the offer of their faith; but
the mercy of Providence — for so it plainly was — inspired him
to give them a decided refusal on the ground that he did not
choose to comply with some of their regulations; though else a
sensual religion might well have enticed a man who was given
up to the indulgence of his passions.

The Chazarian Jews flattered themselves with the hope of
attracting the Prince by boasting of their religion and the
ancient glory of Jerusalem. "But where," demanded the wise
grandson of Olga, "is your country?"

" It is ruined by the wrath of God for the sins of our fathers,"
was their answer. Vladimir then said that he had no mind to
embrace the law of a people whom God had abandoned. There
came also western doctors from Germany, who would have
persuaded Vladimir to embrace Christianity, but their Chris-
tianity seemed strange to him; for Russia had hitherto no
acquaintance but with Byzantium.

"Return home," he said; "our ancestors did not receive this
religion from you."

A Greek embassy had the best success of them all. A cer-
tain philosopher, a monk named Constantine, after having
exposed the insufficiency of other religions, eloquently set before
the Prince those judgments of God which are in the world, the
redemption of the human race by the blood of Christ, and the
retribution of the life to come. His discourse powerfully affected
the heathen monarch, who was burdened with the heavy sins
of a tumultuous youth; and this was particularly the case when
the monk pointed out to him on an icon, which represented the
last judgment, the different lot of the just and of the wicked.

" Good to these on the right hand, but woe to those on the
left!" exclaimed Vladimir, deeply affected. But sensual nature
still struggled in him against heavenly truth. Having dismissed
the missionary, or ambassador, with presents, he still hesitated

134 CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT

to decide, and wished first to examine further concerning the
faith, in concert with the elders of his council, that all Russia
might have a share in his conversion. The council of the Prince
decided to send chosen men to make their observations on each
religion on the spot where it was professed; and this public
agreement explains in some degree the sudden and general
acceptance of Christianity which shortly after followed in Rus-
sia. It is probable that not only the chiefs, but the common peo-
ple also, were expecting and ready for the change.

The Greek emperors did not fail to profit by this favorable
opportunity, and the patriarch himself in person celebrated the
divine liturgy in the Church of St. Sophia with the utmost
possible magnificence before the astonished ambassadors of
Vladimir. The sublimity and splendor of the service struck
them; but we do not ascribe to the mere external impression
that softening of the hearts of these heathens, on which de-
pended the conversion of a whole nation. From the very
earliest times of the Church, extraordinary signs of God's power
have constantly gone hand-in-hand with that apparent weak-
ness of man by which the Gospel was preached; and so also
the Byzantine Chronicle relates of the Russian ambassadors,
"That during the Divine liturgy, at the time of carrying the
Holy Gifts in procession to the throne or altar and singing the
cherubic hymn, the eyes of their spirits were opened, and they
saw, as in an ecstasy, glittering youths who joined in singing
the hymn of the 'Thrice Holy.'"

Being thus fully persuaded of the truth of the orthodox
faith, they returned to their own country already Christians in
heart, and without saying a word before the Prince in favor of
the other religions, they declared thus concerning the Greek:
"When we stood in the temple we did not know where we were,
for there is nothing else like it upon earth: there in truth God
has his dwelling with men ; and we can never forget the beauty
we saw there. No one who has once tasted sweets will after-
ward take that which is bitter; nor can we now any longer
abide in heathenism."

Then the boyars said to Vladimir: "If the religion of the
Greeks had not been good, your grandmother Olga, who was
the wisest of women, would not have embraced it."

CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT 135

The weight of the name of Olga decided her grandson, and
he said no more in answer than these words: "Where shall we
be baptized ? "

But Vladimir, led by a sense which had not yet been purged
by Greece, thought it best to follow the custom of his ancestors,
who made warlike descents upon Constantinople, and so win
to himself, sword in hand, his new religion. He embarked his
warriors on board their vessels and attacked Cherson in the
Taurid, a city which was subject to the emperors Basil and
Constantine.

After a long and unsuccessful siege a certain priest, named
Anastasius, by means of an arrow shot from the town, informed
the Prince that the fate of the besieged depended upon his
cutting off the aqueducts, which supplied them with water.
Vladimir in great joy made a vow that he would be baptized if
he gained possession of the town; and he did gain possession
of it. Then he sent to Constantinople to demand from the
Greek Emperor the hand of their sister Anna, and they in answer
proposed as a condition that he should embrace Christianity;
for though they themselves desired an alliance with so powerful
a prince, they at the same time took care to follow the prudent
and pious policy of their predecessors, who had ever sought to
bring their fierce neighbors under the humanizing influence of
the faith. The Prince declared his consent; because, in his
own words, he had "long since examined and conceived a love
for the Greek law."

It was her faith alone which influenced the princess to sacri-
fice herself at once for the temporal interests of her own country
and for the eternal welfare of a strange people*. Accompanied
by a venerable body of clergy, she sailed for Cherson, and on
her arrival induced the Prince to hasten his baptism. "For it
was so ordered," says the pious annalist, " by the wisdom of
God, that the sight of the Prince was at that time much affected
by a complaint of the eyes, but at the moment that the Bishop
of Cherson laid his hands upon him, when he had risen up out
of the bath of regeneration, Vladimir suddenly received not
only spiritual illumination, but also the bodily sight of his eyes,
and cried out, 'Now I have seen the true God!'"

Many of the Prince's suite were so struck by his miraculous

136 CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT

recovery that they followed his example and were baptized in
like manner; and these were doubtless afterward zealous for
the introduction of Christianity into their country. The bap-
tism and marriage of Vladimir were both celebrated in the
Church of the Most Holy Mother of God; and hence, no doubt,
arose his peculiar zeal for the most pure Virgin, to whose honor
he afterward erected a cathedral church in his own city of Kieff.
In Cherson itself he built a church, in the name of his angel or
patron St. Basil; and taking with him the relics of St. Clement,
Bishop of Rome, and his disciple Thebas, with church vessels
and ornaments and icons, he restored the city to be again under
the power of the emperors, and returned to Kieff, accompanied
by the princess, their daughter, and her Greek ecclesiastics.

Nestor makes no mention of any of the bishops and priests
from Constantinople and Cherson who followed in the train of
the Prince, excepting only of one, Anastasius, the priest who
had rendered him such good service during the siege; but the
Books of the Genealogies give the name of Michael, a Syrian by
birth, and of six other bishops who were sent together with
him to Cherson by the patriarch Nicholas Chrysoberges. Some
have ventured to suppose that Michael was the name of the
bishop of the times of Oskold; but Nestor says nothing about
him, and this much only is certain, that he stands the first in
the list of the metropolitans of Russia.

After his return to Kieff the "Great Prince" caused his
twelve sons to be baptized, and proceeded to destroy the monu-
ments of heathenism. He ordered Peroun to be thrown into
the Dnieper. The people at first followed their idol, as it was
borne down the stream, but were soon quieted when they saw
that the statue had no power to help itself.

And now Vladimir, being surrounded and supported by be-
lievers in his own domestic circle, and encouraged by seeing
that his boyars and suite were prepared and ready to embrace
the faith, made a proclamation to the people, "That whoever,
on the morrow, should not repair to the river, whether rich or
poor, he should hold him for his enemy." At the call of their
respected lord all the multitude of the citizens in troops, with
their wives and children, flocked to the Dnieper; and without
any manner of opposition received holy baptism as a nation

CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT 137

from the Greek bishops and priests. Nestor draws a touching
picture of this baptism of a whole people at once: "Some stood
in the water up to their necks, others up to their breasts, holding
their young children in their arms; the priests read the prayers
from the shore, naming at once whole companies by the same
name." He who was the means of thus bringing them to sal-
vation, filled with a transport of joy at the affecting sight, cried
out to the Lord, offering and commending into his hands him-
self and his people: "O great God! who hast made heaven and
earth, look down upon these thy new people. Grant them, O
Lord, to know thee the true God, as thou hast been made known
to Christian lands, and confirm in them a true and unfailing
faith; and assist me, O Lord, against my enemy that opposes
me, that, trusting in thee and in thy power, I may overcome all
his wiles."

Vladimir erected the first church — that of St. Basil, after
whom he was named — on the very mount which had formerly
been sacred to Peroun, adjoining his own palace. Thus was
Russia enlightened.

So sudden and ready a conversion of the inhabitants of Kieff
might well seem improbable — that is, unless effected by vio-
lence — did we not attend to the fact that the Russians had been
gradually becoming enlightened ever since the times of Oskold,
for more than a hundred years, by means of commerce, treaties
of peace, and relations of every kind with the Greeks, as well
as with the Bulgarians and Slavonians of kindred origin with
ourselves, who had already been long in possession of the Holy
Scriptures in their own language. The constant endeavors of
the Greek emperors for the conversion of the Russians by
means of their ambassadors and preachers, the tolerance of
the princes, the example and protection of Olga, and the very
delay and hesitation of Vladimir in selecting his religion must
have favorably disposed the minds of the people toward it;
especially if it be true, as has been asserted, that Russia had
already had a bishop in the time of Oskold. In a similar way,
though under different circumstances, in the vast Roman Em-
pire, the conversion of Constantine the Great suddenly ren-
dered Christianity the dominant religion, because, in fact, it
had long before penetrated among all ranks of his subjects.

138 CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT

Vladimir engaged zealously in building churches through-
out the towns and villages of his dominions, and sent priests to
preach in them. He also founded many towns all around Kieff,
and so propagated and confirmed the Christian religion in the
neighborhood of the capital, from whence the new colonies were
sent forth. Neither was he slow in establishing schools, into
which he brought together the children of the boyars, sometimes
even in spite of the unwillingness of their rude parents. In
the mean time the Metropolitan with his bishops made progresses
into the interior of Russia, to the cities of Rostoff and Nov-
gorod, everywhere baptizing and instructing the people. Vladi-
mir himself, for the same good end, went in company with
other bishops to the district of Souzdal and to Volhynia. The
boyars on the Volga and some of the Pechenegian princes em-
braced the gospel of salvation together with his subjects, and
rejoiced to be admitted to holy baptism.

The pious Prince wished to see in his own capital a magnifi-
cent temple in honor of the birth of the most holy Virgin, to be
a likeness and memorial of that at Cherson, in which he himself
had been baptized; and the year after his conversion he sent
to Greece for builders, and laid the foundation of the first stone
cathedral in Russia, on the very same spot where the Varangian
martyrs had suffered. But the first metropolitan was not to
live to its completion; only his holy remains were buried in it,
and were thence translated afterward to the Pechersky Lavra.
Another metropolitan, Leontius, a Greek by birth, sent by the
same patriarch Nicholas, consecrated the new temple, to the great
satisfaction of Vladimir, who made a vow to endow it with the
tenth part of all his revenues; and from hence it was called
" the Cathedral of the Tithes."

These tithes, according to the ordinance ascribed to Prince
Vladimir, consisted of the fixed quota of corn, cattle, and the
profits of trade, for the support of the clergy and the poor; and
besides this there was a further tithe collected from every
cause which was tried; for the right of judging causes was
granted to the bishops and the metropolitan, and they judged
according to the Nomocanon. The canons of the holy councils
and the Greek ecclesiastical laws, together with the Holy Script-
ures, were taken, from the very first, as the basis of all eccle-

CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT 139

siastical administration in Russia; and together with them
there came into use some portions also of the civil law of the
Greeks, through the influence of the Church. The care of the
new temple and the collection of tithes for its support were in-
trusted to a native of Cherson named Anastasius, who enjoyed
the confidence of Vladimir and his successors.

The light of Christianity had now been diffused throughout
the whole of Russia; but still the faith was nowhere as yet firmly
established, because there were no bishops regularly settled in
the towns. The metropolitan Leontius formed the first five
dioceses, and appointed Joachim of Cherson to be Bishop of
Novgorod, Theodorus of Rostoff, Neophytus of Chernigoff,
Stephen the Volhynian of Vladimir, and Nicetas of Belgorod.
Assisted by Dobrina, the uncle of the " Great Prince," who had
long governed in Novgorod, the new bishop Joachim threw
the statue of Peroun into the Volkoff, and broke down the
idolatrous altars without any opposition on the part of the
citizens; for they, too, like the inhabitants of Kieff, from their
comparative degree of civilization and from their relations of
intercourse with the Greeks, were in all probability already
favorably disposed for the reception of Christianity. Tradition
asserts that even as far back as the time of St. Olga the hermits
Sergius and Germanus lived upon the desolate island of Balaam
in the lake Ladoga, and that from thence St. Abramius went
forth to preach Christ to the savage inhabitants of Rostoff.

The attempt to found a diocese at Rostoff was less successful.
The first two bishops, Theodore and Hilarion, were driven
away by the fierce tribes of the forest district of Meri, who held
obstinately to their idols in spite of the zeal of St. Abramius.
It cost the two succeeding bishops, St. Leontius and St. Isaiah,
many years of extraordinary labor and exertion, attended fre-
quently by persecutions, before they at length succeeded in
establishing Christianity in that savage region, from whence it
spread itself by degrees into all the surrounding districts.

Thus Vladimir, having piously observed the commandments
of Christ during the course of his long reign, had the consolation
of seeing before his death the fruits of his own conversion in
all the wide extent of his dominions. He departed this life in
peace at Kieff, and was soon reckoned with his grandmother

i4o CONVERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT

Olga among the guardian saints of Russia. John, the third
metropolitan, who had been sent from Constantinople upon the
death of Leontius, buried the Prince in the Church of the
Tithes, which he had built, near the tomb of the Grecian princess,
his wife, and the uncorrupted relics of St. Olga were translated
to the same spot

LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMERICA

A.D. looo

CHARLES C. RAFN SAGA OF ERIC THE RED

Besides the Northmen or Norsemen, those ancient Scandinavians
celebrated in history for their adventurous exploits at sea, the Chinese
and the Welsh have laid claim to the discovery of North America at
periods much earlier than that of Columbus and the Cabots. But to the
Norse sailors alone is it generally agreed that credit for that achieve-
ment is probably due. Associated with their supposed arrival and so-
journ on the coast of what is now New England, about A.D. 1000, the
"Round Tower" or "Old Stone Mill" at Newport, R. I., the mysterious
inscription on the " Dighton Rock " in Massachusetts, and the " Skeleton
in Armor " dug up at Fall River, Mass., and made the subject of a ballad
by Longfellow, have figured prominently in the discussion of this pre-
Columbian discovery. But these conjectural evidences are no longer
regarded as having any connection with historical probability or as dat-
ing back to the tune of the Northmen.

It is considered, however, to be pretty certain that at the end of the
tenth century or at the beginning of the eleventh the Northmen reached
the shores of North America. About that time, it is known, they set-
tled Iceland, and from there a colony went to Greenland, where they
long remained. From there, either by design or by accident, some of
them, it is supposed, may have reached the coast of Labrador, and
thence sailed down until they came to the region which they named Vin-
land. From there they sent home glowing accounts to their countrymen
in the northern lands, who came in larger numbers to join them in the
New World.

About the middle of the nineteenth century great interest among stu-
dents of this subject was aroused by a work written by Prof. C. C.
Rafn, of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, Copenhagen. In
this work— Antiquitates Americana— the proofs of this visit of the
Northmen to the shores of North America were convincingly set forth.
In the same work the Icelandic sagas, written in the fourteenth century,
and containing the original accounts of the Northmen's voyages to Vin-
land, were first brought prominently before modern scholars. Although
many other writings on the voyages have since appeared, the great work
of Rafn still holds its place of authority, very little in the way of new
material having been brought to light. The portion of his narrative

141

142 LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMERICA

which follows covers the main facts of the history, and the translation
from the saga furnishes an excellent example of its quaint and simple
narration.

CHARLES C. RAFN

C RIC THE RED, in the spring of 986, emigrated from Ice-

land to Greenland, formed a settlement there, and fixed his
residence at Brattalid in Ericsfiord. Among others who accom-
panied him was Heriulf Bardson, who established himself at
Heriulfsnes.

Biarne, the son of the latter, was at that time absent on a
trading voyage to Norway; but in the course of the summer
returning to Eyrar, in Iceland, and finding that his father had
taken his departure, this bold navigator resolved "still to spend
the following winter, like all the preceding ones, with his father,"
although neither he nor any of his people had ever navigated
the Greenland sea.

They set sail, but met with northerly winds and fogs, and,
after many days' sailing, knew not whither they had been carried.
At length when the weather again cleared up, they saw a land
which was without mountains, overgrown with wood, and hav-
ing many gentle elevations. As this land did not correspond
to the descriptions of Greenland, they left it on the larboard
hand, and continued sailing two days, when they saw another
land, which was flat and overgrown with wood.

From thence they stood out to sea, and sailed three days
with a southwest wind, when they saw a third land, which was
high and mountainous and covered with icebergs (glaciers).
They coasted along the shore and saw that it was an island.

They did not go on shore, as Biarne did not find the country
to be inviting. Bearing away from this island, they stood out
to sea with the same wind, and, after four days' sailing with
fresh gales, they reached Heriulfsnes, in Greenland.

Some time after this, probably in the year 994, Biarne paid
a visit to Eric, Earl of Norway, and told him of his voyage
and of the unknown lands he had discovered. He was blamed
by many for not having examined these countries more accu-
rately.

On his return to Greenland there was much talk about
undertaking a voyage of discovery. Leif, a son of Eric the Red,

LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMERICA 143

bought Biarne's ship, and equipped it with a crew of thirty-five
men, among whom was a German, of the name of Tyrker,
who had long resided with his father, and who had been very
fond of Leif in his childhood. In the year 1000 they commenced
the projected voyage, and came first to the land which Biarne
had seen last. They cast anchor and went on shore. No grass
was seen; but everywhere in this country were vast ice moun-
tains (glaciers), and the intermediate space between these and
the shore was, as it were, one uniform plain of slate (hello). The
country appearing to them destitute of good qualities, they called
it Hellu-Land.

They put out to sea, and came to another land, where they
also went on shore. The country was very level and covered
with woods; and wheresoever they went there were cliffs of
white sand (sand-ar hvitir), and a low coast (o-soe-bratt). They
called the country Mark Land (woodland). From thence they
again stood out to sea, with a northeast wind, and continued
sailing for two days before they made land again. They then
came to an island which lay to the eastward of the mainland.
They sailed westward in waters where there was much ground
left dry at ebb tide.

Afterward they went on shore at a place where a river, issu-
ing from a lake, fell into the sea. They brought their ship into
the river, and from thence into the lake, where they cast anchor.
Here they constructed some temporary log huts; but later,
when they had made up their mind to winter there, they built
large houses, afterward called Leifs-Budir (Leif's-booths).

When the buildings were completed Leif divided his people
into two companies, who were by turns employed in keeping
watch at the houses, and in making small excursions for the
purpose of exploring the country in the vicinity. His instruc-
tions to them were that they should not go to a greater distance
than that they might return in the course of the same evening,
and that they should not separate from one another.

Leif took his turn also, joining the exploring party the one
day, and remaining at the houses the other.

It so happened that one day the German, Tyrker, was miss-
ing. Leif accordingly went out with twelve men in search of
him, but they had not gone far from their houses when they

144 LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMERICA

met him coming toward them. When Leif inquired why he
had been so long absent, he at first answered in German, but
they did not understand what he said. He then said to them in
the Norse tongue: "I did not go much farther, yet I have a
discovery to acquaint you with: I have found vines and
grapes."

He added by way of confirmation that he had been born
in a country where there were plenty of vines. They had now
two occupations: namely, to hew timber for loading the ship,
and collect grapes; with these last they filled the ship's long-
boat. Leif gave a name to the country, and called it Vinland
(Vineland). In the spring they sailed again from thence, and
returned to Greenland.

Leif's Vineland voyage was now a subject of frequent con-
versation in Greenland, and his brother Thorwald was of opin-
ion that the country had not been sufficiently explored. He,
accordingly, borrowed Leif's ship, and, aided by his brother's
counsel and directions, commenced a voyage in the year 1002.
He arrived at Leif's-booths, in Vineland, where they spent the
winter, he and his crew employing themselves in fishing. In
the spring of 1003 Thorwald sent a party in the ship's long-boat
on a voyage of discovery southward. They found the country
beautiful and well wooded, with but little space between the
woods and the sea; there were likewise extensive ranges of
white sand, and many islands and shallows.

They found no traces of men having been there before them,
excepting on an island lying to westward, where they found a
wooden shed. They did not return to Leif's-booths until the
fall. In the following summer, 1004, Thorwald sailed eastward
with the large ship, and then northward past a remarkable
headland enclosing a bay, and which was opposite to another
headland. They called it Kial-Ar-Nes (Keel Cape).

From thence they sailed along the eastern coast of the land,
into the nearest firths, to a promontory which there projected,
and which was everywhere overgrown with wood. There Thor-
wald went ashore with all his companions. He was so pleased
with this place that he exclaimed : " This is beautiful ! and here I
should like well to fix my dwelling ! " Afterward, when they were
preparing to go on board, they observed on the sandy beach,

LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMERICA 145

within the promontory, three hillocks, and repairing hither
they found three canoes, under each of which were three Skrel-
lings (Esquimaux). They came to blows with the latter and
killed eight, but the ninth escaped with his canoe. Afterward
a countless number issued forth against them from the interior
of the bay.

They endeavored to protect themselves by raising battle-
screens on the ship's side. The Skrellings continued shooting
at them for a while and then retired. Thorwald was wounded
by an arrow under the arm, and finding that the wound was
mortal he said : " I now advise you to prepare for your departure
as soon as possible, but me ye shall bring to the promontory,
where I thought it good to dwell; it may be that it was a pro-
phetic word that fell from my mouth about my abiding there for
a season; there shall ye bury me, and plant a cross at my head,
and another at my feet, and call the place Kross-a-Ness (Cross-
ness) in all time coming." He died, and they did as he had
ordered. Afterward they returned to their companions at Leif 's-
booths, and spent the winter there; but in the spring of 1005
they sailed again to Greenland, having important intelligence
to communicate to Leif.

Thorstein, Eric's third son, had resolved to proceed to Vine-
land to fetch his brother's body. He fitted out the same ship,
and selected twenty-five strong and able-bodied men for his
crew; his wife, Gudrida, also went along with him. They were
tossed about the ocean during the whole summer, and knew
not whither they were driven; but at the close of the first week of
winter they landed at Lysufiord, in the western settlement of
Greenland.

There Thorstein died during the winter; and in the spring
Gudrida returned again to Ericsfiord.

SAGA OF ERIC THE RED

There was a man named Thorwald; he was a son of Asvald,
Ulf's son, Eyxna-Thori's son. His son's name was Eric. He
and his father went from Jaederen to Iceland, on account of
manslaughter, and settled on Hornstrandir, and dwelt at Drau-
gar. There Thorwald died, and Eric then married Thorheld,
a daughter of Jorund, Atli's son, and Thorbiorg the sheep-

B., VOL. V.— 10.

146 LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMERICA

chested, who had been married before to Thorbiorn of the
Haukadal family.

Eric then removed from the north, and cleared land in
Haukadal, and dwelt at Ericsstadir, by Vatnshorn. Then Eric's
thralls caused a landslide on Valthiof's farm, Valthiofsstadir.
Eyiolf the Foul, Valthiof's kinsman, slew the thralls near
Skeidsbrekkur, above Vatnshorn. For this Eric killed Eyiolf
the Foul, and he also killed Duelling-Hrafn, at Leikskalar.

Geirstein and Odd of Jorva, Eyiolf's kinsmen, conducted
the prosecution for the slaying of their kinsmen, and Eric was
in consequence banished from Haukadal. He then, took pos-
session of Brokey and Eyxney, and dwelt at Tradir on Sudrey
the first winter. It was at this time that he loaned Thorgest his
outer dais-boards. Eric afterward went to Eyxney, and dwelt
at Ericsstad. He then demanded his outer dais-boards, but
did not obtain them.

Eric then carried the outer dais-boards away from Breid-
abolstad, and Thorgest gave chase. They came to blows a short
distance from the farm of Drangar. There two of Thorgest's
sons were killed, and certain other men besides. After this
each of them retained a considerable body of men with him at
his home. Styr gave Eric his support, as did also Eyiolf of
Sviney, Thorbiorn, VifiTs son, and the sons of Thorbrand of
Alptafirth; while Thorgest was backed by the sons of Thord
the Yeller, and Thorgeir of Hitardal, Aslak of Langadal, and
his son, Illugi. Eric and his people were condemned to out-
lawry at Thorsness-thing. He equipped his ship for a voyage
in Ericsvag; while Eyiolf concealed him in Dimunarvag, when
Thorgest and his people were searching for him among the
islands. He said to them that it was his intention to go in search
of that land which Gunnbiorn, son of Ulf the Crow, saw when
he was driven out of his course, westward across the main, and
discovered Gunnviorns-skerries.

He told them that he would return again to his friends if
he should succeed in finding that country. Thorbiorn and
Eyiolf and Styr accompanied Eric out beyond the islands, and
they parted with the greatest friendliness. Eric said to them
that he would render them similar aid, so far as it might be
within his power, if they should ever stand in need of his help.

LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMERICA 147

Eric sailed out to sea, from Snaefells-iokul, and arrived at that
ice mountain which is called Blacksark. Thence he sailed to
the southward that he might ascertain whether there was hab-
itable country in that direction. He passed the first winter at
Ericsey, near the middle of the western settlement.

In the following spring he proceeded to Ericsfirth, and
selected a site there for his homestead. That summer he ex-
plored the western uninhabited region, remaining there for a
long time, and assigning many local names there. The second
winter he spent at Ericsholms, beyond Hvarfsgnipa. But the
third summer he sailed northward to Snaefell, and into Hrafns-
firth. He believed then that he had reached the head of Erics-
firth; he turned back then, and remained the third winter at
Ericsey, at the mouth of Ericsfirth.

The following summer he sailed to Iceland and landed in
Breidafirth. He remained that winter with Ingolf at Holmlatr.
In the spring he and Thorgest fought together, and Eric was
defeated; after this a reconciliation was effected between them.

That summer Eric set out to colonize the land which he had
discovered, and which he called Greenland, because, he said,
men would be the more readily persuaded thither if the land
had a good name. Eric was married to a woman named Thor-
hild, and had two sons; one of these was named Thorstein,
and the other Leu0. They were both promising men. Thorstein
lived at home with his father, and there was not at that time
a man in Greenland who was accounted of so great promise
as he.

Leif had sailed to Norway, where he was at the court of
King Olaf Tryggvason. When Leif sailed from Greenland, in
the summer, they were driven out of their course to the Hebrides.
It was late before they got fair winds thence, and they remained
there far into the summer.

Leif became enamoured of a certain woman, whose name
was Thorgunna. She was a woman of fine family, and Leif
observed that she was possessed of rare intelligence. When
Leif was preparing for his departure, Thorgunna asked to be
permitted to accompany him. Leif inquired whether she had
in this the approval of her kinsmen. She replied that she did
not care for it. Leif responded that he did not deem it the part

i48 LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMERICA

of wisdom to abduct so high-born a woman in a strange country,
"and we so few in number." "It is by no means certain that
thou shalt find this to be the better decision," said Thorgunna.
" I shall put it to the proof, notwithstanding," said Leif . " Then
I tell thee," said Thorgunna, "that I foresee that I shall give
birth to a male child; and though thou give this no heed, yet
will I rear the boy, and send him to thee in Greenland when he
shall be fit to take his place with other men. And I foresee that
thou wilt get as much profit of this son as is thy due from this
our parting; moreover, I mean to come to Greenland myself
before the end comes."

Leif gave her a gold finger-ring, a Greenland Wadmal
mantle, and a belt of walrus tusk.

This boy came to Greenland, and was called Thorgils. Leif
acknowledged his paternity, and some men will have it that this
Thorgils came to Iceland in the summer before the Froda-
wonder. However, this Thorgils was afterward in Greenland,
and there seemed to be something not altogether natural about
him before the end came. Leif and his companions sailed away
from the Hebrides, and arrived in Norway in the autumn.

Leif went to the court of King Olaf Tryggvason. He was
well received by the King, who felt that he could see that Leif
was a man of great accomplishments. Upon one occasion the
King came to speech with Leif, and asked him, " Is it thy pur-
pose to sail to Greenland in the summer?"

"It is my purpose," said Leif, "if it be your will."

"I believe it will be well," answered the King, "and thither
thou shalt go upon my errand, to proclaim Christianity there."

Leif replied that the King should decide, but gave it as his
belief that it would be difficult to carry this mission to a success-
ful issue in Greenland. The King replied that he knew of no
man who would be better fitted for this undertaking; "and in
thy hands the cause will surely prosper."

"This can only be," said Leif, "if I enjoy the grace of your
protection."

Leif put to sea when his ship was ready for the voyage. For
a long time he was tossed about upon the ocean, and came upon
lands of which he had previously had no knowledge. There
were self-sown wheat-fields and vines growing there. There

LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMERICA 149

were also those trees there which are called "mansur," and of
all these they took specimens. Some of the timbers were so large
that they were used in building. Leif found men upon a wreck,
and took them home with him, and procured quarters for them
all during the winter. In this wise he showed his nobleness
and goodness, since he introduced Christianity into the country,
and saved the men from the wreck; and he was called Leif "the
Lucky" ever after.

Leif landed in Ericsfirth, and then went home to Brattahlid;
he was well received by everyone. He soon proclaimed Chris-
tianity throughout the land, and the Catholic faith, and an-
nounced King Olaf Tryggvason's messages to the people, tell-
ing them how much excellence and how great glory accompanied
this faith.

Eric was slow in forming the determination to forsake his
old belief, but Thiodhild embraced the faith promptly, and
caused a church to be built at some distance from the house.
This building was called Thiodhild's church, and there she and
those persons who had accepted Christianity — and there were
many — were wont to offer their prayers.

At this tune there began to be much talk about a voyage of
exploration to that country which Leif had discovered. The
leader of this expedition was Thorstein Ericsson, who was a
good man and an intelligent, and blessed with many friends.
Eric was likewise invited to join them, for the men believed
that his luck and foresight would be of great furtherance. He
was slow in deciding, but did not say nay when his friends
besought him to go. They thereupon equipped that ship in
which Thorbiorn had come out, and twenty men were selected
for the expedition. They took little cargo with them, naught else
save their weapons and provisions.

On that morning when Eric set out from his home he took
with him a little chest containing gold and silver; he hid this
treasure and then went his way. He had proceeded but a short
distance, however, when he fell from his horse and broke his
ribs and dislocated his shoulder, whereat he cried, "Ai, ai!"
By reason of this accident he sent his wife word that she should
procure the treasure which he had concealed — for to the hiding
of the treasure he attributed his misfortune. Thereafter they

150 LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMERICA

sailed cheerily out of Ericsfirth, in high spirits over their plan.
They were long tossed about upon the ocean, and could not lay
the course they wished.

They came hi sight of Iceland, and likewise saw birds from
the Irish coast. Their ship was, in sooth, driven hither and
thither over the sea. In autumn they turned back, worn out
by toil and exposure to the elements, and exhausted by their
labors, and arrived at Ericsfirth at the very beginning of win-
ter.

Then said Eric: "More cheerful were we in the summer,
when we put out of the firth, but we still live, and it might have
been much worse."

Thorstein answers: "It will be a princely deed to endeavor
to look well after the wants of all these men who are now in
need, and to make provision for them during the winter." Eric
answers: "It is ever true, as it is said, that ' It is never clear ere
the winter comes,' and so it must be here. We will act now
upon thy counsel in this matter."

All of the men who were not otherwise provided for accom-
panied the father and son. They landed thereupon, and went
home to Brattahlid, where they remained throughout the win-
ter.

MAHOMETANS IN INDIA
BLOODY INVASIONS UNDER MAHMUD

A.D. 1000

ALEXANDER DOW

While Buddhism was giving place to Hinduism in India a new faith
had arisen in Arabia. Mahomet, born A.D. 570, created a conquering
religion, and died in 632. Within a hundred years after his death, his
followers had invaded the countries of Asia as far as the Hindu Kush.
Here their progress was stayed, and Islam had to consolidate itself dur-
ing three more centuries before it grew strong enough to grasp the rich
prize of India. But almost from the first the Arabs had fixed eager eyes
upon that wealthy empire, and several premature inroads foretold the
coming storm.

About fifteen years after the death of the Prophet, Othman sent a
naval expedition to Thana and Broach on the Bombay coast. Other
raids toward Sind took place in 662 and 664, with no lasting results.

Hinduism was for a time submerged, but never drowned, by the tide
of Mahometan conquest, which set steadily toward India about A.D.
1000. At the present day the south of India remains almost entirely
Hindu. By far the greater number of the Indian feudatory chiefs are
still under Brahman influence. But in the northwest, where the first
waves of invasion have always broken, about one-third of the population
now profess Islam. The upper valley of the Ganges boasts a succession
of Mussulman capitals ; and in the swamps of Lower Bengal the bulk
of the non-Aryan or aboriginal population have become converts to the
Mahometan religion. The Mussulmans now make fifty-seven millions
of the total of two hundred and eighty-eight millions in India.

The armies of Islam had carried the crescent throughout Asia west
of the Hindu Kush, and through Africa and Southern Europe, to distant
Spain and France, before they obtained a foothold in the Punjab.

The brilliant attempt in 7 1 1 to found a lasting Mahometan dynasty
in Sind failed. Three centuries later, the utmost efforts of a series of
Mussulman invaders from the northwest only succeeded in annexing a
small portion of the frontier Punjab provinces.

The popular notion that India fell an easy prey to the Mussulmans is
opposed to the historical facts. Mahometan rule in India consists of a
series of invasions and partial conquests, during eleven centuries from

15*

1 52 MAHOMETANS IN INDIA

Othman's raid, about A.D. 647, to Ahmad Shah's tempest of devastation
in 1761.

At no time was Islam triumphant throughout all India. Hindu dynas-
ties always ruled over a large area.

The first collision between Hinduism and Islam on the Punjab fron-
tier was the act of the Hindus. In 977 Jaipal, the Hindu chief of Lahore,
annoyed by Afghan raids, led his troops through the mountains against
the Mahometan kingdom of Ghazni, in Afghanistan. Subuktigin, the
Ghaznivide prince, after severe fighting, took advantage of a hurricane
to cut off the retreat of the Hindus through the pass. He allowed them,
however, to return to India, on the surrender of fifty elephants and the
promise of one million dirhams (about $125,000).

In 997 Subuktigin died, and was succeeded by his son, Mahmud of
Ghazni, aged sixteen. This valiant monarch, surnamed " the Great,"
reigned for thirty-three years, and extended his father's little Afghan
kingdom into a great Mahometan sovereignty, stretching from Persia on
the west to far within the Punjab on the east.

JV/IAHMUD was born about the year 357 of the Hegira — or
350, according to some authorities — and, as astrologers say,
with many happy omens expressed in the horoscope of his life.
Subuktigin, being asleep at the time of his birth, dreamed that
he beheld a green tree springing forth from his chimney, which
threw its shadow over the face of the earth and screened from
the storms of heaven the whole animal creation. This indeed
was verified by the justice of Mahmud; for, if we can believe
the poet, in his reign the wolf and the sheep drank together at
the same brook.

When Mahmud had settled his dispute with his brother
Ismail, he hastened to Balik, from whence he sent an ambas-
sador to Munsur, Emperor of Bokhara, to whom the family of
Ghazni still pretended to owe allegiance, complaining of the
indignity which he met with in the appointment of Buktusin to
the government of Khorassan, a country so long in possession
of his father. It was returned to him for answer that he was
already in possession of the territories of Balik, Turmuz, and
Herat, which was part of the empire, and that there was a
necessity to divide the favors of Bokhara among her friends.
Buktusin, it was also insinuated, had been a faithful and good
servant; which seemed to throw a reflection upon the family
of Ghazni, who had rendered themselves independent in the
governments they held of the royal house of Samania. Mah-

MAHOMETANS IN INDIA 153

mud, not discouraged by this answer, sent Hasan Jemmavi
with rich presents to the court of Bokhara, and a letter in the
following terms: "That he hoped the pure spring of friend-
ship, which had flowed in the time of his father, should not
now be polluted with the ashes of indignity, nor Mahmud be
reduced to the necessity of divesting himself of that obedience
which he had hitherto paid to the imperial family of Sama-
nia."

When Hasan delivered his embassy, his capacity and elo-
cution appeared so great to the Emperor, that, desirous to
gain him over to his interest by any means, he bribed him at
last with the honors of the wazirate, but never returned an
answer to Mahmud. That prince having received informa-
tion of this transaction, through necessity turned his face
toward Nishapur, and marched to Murgab. Buktusin, in the
mean time, treacherously entered into a confederacy with Faek,
and, forming a conspiracy in the camp of Munsur, seized upon
the person of that prince and cruelly put out his eyes. Abdul,
the younger brother of Munsur, who was but a boy, was ad-
vanced by the traitors to the throne. Being, however, afraid
of the resentment of Mahmud, the conspirators hastened to
Merv, whither they were pursued by the King with great ex-
pedition. Finding themselves, upon their march, hard pressed
in the rear by Mahmud, they halted and gave him battle.
But the sin of ingratitude had darkened the face of their fort-
une, so that the breeze of victory blew upon the standards of
the King of Ghazni.

Faek carried off the young King, and fled to Bokhara, and
Buktusin was not heard of for some time, but at length he
found his way to his fellows in iniquity and began to collect
his scattered troops. Faek, in the mean time, fell ill and soon
afterward expired. Elik, the Usbek King, seizing upon the
opportunity offered him by that event, marched with an army
from Kashgar to Bokhara and deprived Abdul-Mallek and
his adherents of life and empire at the same time. Thus per-
ished the last of the house of Samania, which had reigned for
the space of one hundred and twenty-seven years.

The Emperor of Ghazni, at this juncture, employed him-
self in settling the government of the provinces of Balik and

I54 MAHOMETANS IN INDIA

Khorassan, the affairs of which he regulated in such an able
manner that the fame thereof reached the ears of the Caliph
of Bagdad, the illustrious Al-Kadar Balla, of the noble house
of Abbas. The Caliph sent him a rich dress of honor, such as
he had never before bestowed on any king, and dignified Mah-
mud with the titles of the Protector of the State and Treasurer
of Fortune. In the end of the month Zikada, in the year of the
Hegira 390, Mahmud hastened from the city of Balak to Herat,
and from Herat to Sistan, where he defeated Khaliph, the son
of Achmet, the governor of that province of the extinguished
family of Bokhara, and returned to Ghazni. He then turned
his face toward India, took many forts and provinces, in which,
having appointed his own governors, he returned to his do-
minions where he "spread the carpet of justice so smoothly
upon the face of the earth that the love of him, and loyalty,
gained a place in every heart."

Having negotiated a treaty with Elak the Usbek, the prov-
ince of Maver-ul-nere was ceded to him, for which he made an
ample return in presents of great value; and the closest friend-
ship and familiarity, for a long time, existed between the
kings.

Mahmud made a vow to heaven that if ever he should be
blessed with tranquillity in his own dominions he would turn
his arms against the idolaters of Hindustan. He marched in
the year 391 (Ad Hegira) from Ghazni with ten thousand of
his chosen horse, and came to Peshawur, where Jipal, the
Indian prince of Lahore, with twelve thousand horse and
thirty thousand foot, supported by three hundred chain-ele-
phants, opposed him. On Saturday, the 8th of the month
Mohirrim, in the year 392 of the Hegira, an obstinate battle
ensued, in which the Emperor was victorious; Jipal, with fifteen
of his principal officers, was taken prisoner, and five thousand
of his troops lay dead upon the field. Mahmud in this action
acquired great wealth and fame, for round the neck of Jipal
alone were found sixteen strings of jewels, each of which was
valued at one hundred and eighty thousand rupees.

After this victory, the Emperor marched from Peshawur,
and investing the fort of Batandi, reduced it, releasing his
prisoners upon the payment of a large ransom, and the further

MAHOMETANS IN INDIA 155

stipulation of an annual tribute, then returned to Ghazni. It
was in those days a custom of the Hindus that whatever rajah
was twice defeated by the Moslems should be, by that disgrace,
rendered ineligible for further command. Jipal, in compli-
ance with this custom, having raised his son to the government,
ordered a funeral pile to be prepared, upon which he sacri-
ficed himself to his gods.

A year later, Mahmud again marched into Sistan, and
brought Kaliph, who had mismanaged his government, prisoner
to Ghazni. Finding that the tribute from Hindustan had not
been paid, in the year A.H. 395 he directed his march toward
the city of Battea, and, leaving the boundaries of Multan,
arrived at Tahera, which was fortified with an exceeding high
wall and a deep, broad ditch. Tahera was at that time gov-
erned by a prince called Bakhera, who had, in the pride of
power and wealth, greatly troubled the Mahometan governors
whom Mahmud had delegated to rule in Hindustan. Bakhera
had also refused to pay his proportion of the tribute to An-
nandpal, the son of Jipal, of whom he held his authority.

When Mahmud entered the territories of Bakhera, that
prince called out his troops to receive him, and, taking pos-
session of a strong position, engaged the Mahometan army for
the space of three days; in which tune they suffered so much
that they were on the point of abandoning the attack. But
on the fourth day, Mahmud appeared at the head of his troops,
and addressed them at length, encouraging them to win glory.
He concluded by telling them that this day he had devoted
himself to conquest or to death. Bakhera, on his part, invoked
the gods at the temple, and prepared, with his former resolu-
tion, to repel the enemy. The Mahometans charged with
their usual impetuosity, but were repulsed with great slaughter;
yet returning with fresh courage and redoubled rage, the attack
was continued until the evening, when Mahmud, turning his
face to the holy Kaaba, invoked the aid of the Prophet in the
presence of his army.

"Advance! advance!" cried then the King. "Our prayers
have found favor with God!"

Immediately a great shout arose among the host, and the
Moslems, pressing forward as if they courted death, obliged

156 MAHOMETANS IN INDIA

the enemy to give ground, and pursued them in full retreat to
the gates of the city.

The Emperor having next morning invested the place, gave
orders to make preparations for rilling up the ditch, which task
in a few days was nearly completed. Bakhera, finding he
could not long defend the city, determined to leave only a
small garrison for its defence; and accordingly, one night, he
marched out with the rest of his troops, and took position in a
wood on the banks of the Indus. Mahmud, being informed of
his retreat, detached part of his army to pursue him. Bakhera,
by this time, was deserted by fortune and consequently by
most of his friends; he found himself surrounded by the Ma-
hometans and attempted in vain to force his way through them.
When just on the point of being taken prisoner, he turned his
sword against his breast, while the most of his adherents were
slaughtered in attempting to avenge his death. Mahmud, in
the mean time, had taken Tahera by assault ; and found there
one hundred and twenty elephants, many slaves, and much
plunder. He annexed the town and its dependencies to his
own dominions, and returned victorious to Ghazni.

In the year A.H. 396 he formed the design of recon-
quering Multan, which had revolted from his rule. Achmet
Lodi, the regent of Multan, had formerly acknowledged the
suzerainty of Mahmud, and after him his grandson Daud, till
the expedition against Bakhera, when Daud withdrew his alle-
giance. The King marched in the beginning of the spring, with
a great army from Ghazni, and was met by Annandpal, the
son of Jipal, Prince of Lahore, in the hills of Peshawur, whom
he defeated and obliged to fly into Cashmere. Annandpal
had entered into an alliance with Daud; and as there were two
passes only by which the Mahometans could enter Multan, An-
nandpal had taken upon himself to secure that by the way of
Peshawur, which Mahmud chanced to take. The Sultan, re-
turning from the pursuit, entered Multan by the way of Be-
tanda, which was his first intention. When Daud received in-
telligence of the fate of Annandpal, thinking himself too weak
to keep the field, he shut himself up in his fortified place and
humbly solicited forgiveness for his fault, promising to pay a
large tribute and in the future to obey implicitly the Sultan's

MAHOMETANS IN INDIA 157

command. Mahmud received him again as a vassal, and pre-
pared to return to Ghazni, when news was brought to him from
Arsallah, who commanded at Herat, that Elak, the King of
Kashgar, had invaded his realm with an army. The King
hastened to settle the affairs of Hindustan, which he put into
the hands of Shokpal, a Hindu prince who had resided with
Abu-Ali, governor of Peshawur, and had turned Mussulman,
taking the name of Zab Sais.

The particulars of the war of Mahmud with Elak are these:
It has already been mentioned that an uncommon friendship
had existed between this Elak, the Usbek king of Kashgar, a
kingdom in Tartary, and Mahmud. The Emperor himself
was married to the daughter of Elak, but some factious men
about the two courts, by misrepresentations of the princes to
one another, changed their former friendship to enmity. When
Mahmud therefore marched into Hindustan, and had left the
field of Khorassan almost destitute of troops, Elak took advan-
tage of the opportunity, and resolved to appropriate that prov-
ince to himself. To accomplish his design he ordered his
general-in-chief Sapastagi, with a large force, to enter Khoras-
san; and Jaffir Taghi at the same time was appointed to com-
mand in the territory of Balak. Arsallah, the governor of
Herat, being informed of these motions, hastened to Ghazni,
that he might secure the capital. In the mean time the chiefs
of Khorassan, finding themselves deserted and being in no
condition to oppose the enemy, submitted themselves to Sapas-
tagi, the general of Elak.

But Mahmud, having by great marches reached Ghazni,
flowed onward like a torrent with his army toward Balak.
Taghi, who had by this time possessed himself of the place,
fled toward Turmuz at his approach. The Emperor then de-
tached Arsallah with a great part of his army to drive Sapas-
tagi out of Khorassan; and he also, upon the approach of the
troops of Ghazni, abandoned Herat, and marched toward
Maber-ul-nere.

The King of Kashgar, seeing the bad state of his affairs,
solicited the aid of Kudar, King of Chuton, a province of Tar-
tary, on the confines of China, and that prince marched to join
him with fifty thousand horse. Strengthened by this alliance,

158 MAHOMETANS IN INDIA

he crossed, with the confederate armies, the river Gaon, which
was five parasangs from Balak, and opposed himself to the
camp of Mahmud. That monarch immediately drew up his
army in order of battle, giving the command of the centre to
his brother, the noble Nasir, supported by Abu-Nasir, gov-
ernor of Gorgan, and by Abdallah, a chief of reputation in
arms. The right wing he committed to the care of Alta Sash,
an old experienced officer, while the left was the charge of the
valiant Arsallah, a chief of the Afghans. The front of his line
he strengthened with five hundred chain-elephants, with open
spaces behind them, to facilitate their retreat in case of a
defeat.

The King of Kashgar posted himself in the centre, the noble
Kudir led the right, and Taghi the left. The armies advanced
to the charge. The shouts of warriors, the neighing of horses,
and the clashing of arms reached the broad arch of heaven,
while dust obscured the face of day.

Elak, advancing with some chosen squadrons, threw the
centre of Mahmud's army into disorder. Mahmud, perceiving
the enemy's progress, leaped from his horse, and, kissing the
ground, invoked the aid of the Almighty. He then mounted
an elephant-of-war, encouraged his troops, and made a violent
assault upon Elak. The elephant seizing the standard-bearer
of the enemy, folded his trunk around him and tossed him
aloft in the air. He then surged forward like a mountain
removed from its base by an earthquake, and trod the enemy
under his feet like locusts. When the troops of Ghazni saw
their King forcing his way alone through the enemy's ranks
they rushed forward with headlong impetuosity and drove the
enemy with great slaughter before them. Elak, abandoned by
fortune and his army, turned his face to fly. He crossed the
river with a few of his surviving friends, never afterward ap-
pearing in the field to dispute the victory with Mahmud.

The King after this triumph marched two days after the
runaways. On the third night a great storm of wind and
snow overtook the Ghaznian army in the desert. The King's
tents were pitched with much difficulty, while the army was
obliged to lie in the snow. Mahmud, having ordered great fires
to be kindled around his tents, they became so warm that many

MAHOMETANS IN INDIA 159

of the courtiers began to take off their upper garments; when
a facetious chief, whose name was Dalk, came in shivering with
the cold, at which the King, observing, said: "Go out, Dalk,
and tell the Winter that he may burst his cheeks with bluster-
ing, for here we value not his resentment." Dalk went out
accordingly, and, returning in a short time, kissed the ground,
and thus addressed the King: "I have delivered the King's
message to Winter, but the Surly Season replied that if his
hands cannot tear the skirts of Royalty and hurt the attend-
ants of the King, yet he will so use his power to-night on his
army that in the morning Mahmud will be obliged to saddle
his own horses."

The King smiled at this reply, but it presently rendered
him more thoughtful and he determined to proceed no far-
ther. In the morning some hundreds of men and horses were
found to have perished with the cold. Mahmud at the same
time received advices from India, that Zab Sais, the renegade
Hindu, had thrown off his allegiance, and, returning to his
former religion, expelled all the officers who had been ap-
pointed by the King, from their respective departments. The
King immediately determined to punish this renegade, and
with great expedition advanced toward India. He sent on a
part of his cavalry in front, which, coming unexpectedly upon
Zab Sais, defeated him and brought him prisoner to the King.
The rebel was fined four lacs of rupees, of which Mahmud
made a present to his treasurer, and made Zab Sais a prisoner
for life.

Mahmud, having thus settled his affairs in India, returned
in autumn to Ghazni, where he remained for the winter in peace.
But in the spring of the year A.H. 399 Annandpal, sov-
ereign of Lahore, began to raise disturbance in Multan, so
that the King was obliged to undertake another expedition into
those parts, with a great army, to correct the Indians. An-
nandpal, hearing of his intentions, sent ambassadors everywhere
to request the assistance of the other princes of Hindustan, who
considered the extirpation of the Moslems from India as a meri-
torious and political as well as a religious action.

Accordingly the princes of Ugin, Gualier, Callinger, Kan-
noge, Delhi, and Ajmere entered into a confederacy, and,

160 MAHOMETANS IN INDIA

collecting their forces, advanced toward the heads of the Indus,
with the greatest army that had been for some centuries seen
upon the field in India. The two armies came in sight of one
another in a great plain near the confines of the province of
Peshawur. They remained there encamped forty days with-
out action: but the troops of the idolaters daily increased in
number. They were joined by the Gakers, and other tribes
with their armies, and surrounded the Mahometans, who, fear-
ing a general assault, were obliged to intrench themselves.

The King, having thus secured himself, ordered a thousand
archers to the front, to endeavor to provoke the enemy to
advance to the intrenchments. The archers accordingly
were attacked by the Gakers, who, notwithstanding all the
King could do, pursued the retreating bowmen within the
trenches, where a dreadful scene of carnage ensued on both
sides, in which five thousand Moslems in a few minutes were
slain. The enemy's soldiers being now cut down as fast as
they advanced, the attack grew weaker, when suddenly the
elephant which carried the Prince of Lahore, who was chief in
command, took fright at the report of a gun (sic), and turned
tail in flight.

This circumstance struck the Hindus with a panic, for,
thinking they were deserted by their general, they immediately
followed the example. Abdallah, with six thousand Arabian
horse, and Arsallah, with ten thousand Turks, Afghans, and
Chilligis, pursued the enemy for two days and nights; so that
twenty thousand Hindus were killed in their flight — in addi-
tion to the great multitude that fell on the field of battle.

Thirty elephants, with much rich plunder, were brought to
the King, who, to establish the faith, marched against the
Hindus of Nagrakot, breaking down their idols and destroying
their temples. There was at that time, in the territory of Nagra-
kot, a strong fort called Bima, which Mahmud invested after
having destroyed the country round about with fire and sword.
Bima was built by a prince of the same name, on the top of a
steep mountain; and here the Hindus — on account of its
strength — had deposited the wealth consecrated to their idols
in all the neighboring kingdoms; so that in this fort, it was said,
there was a greater quantity of gold, silver, precious stones,

MAHOMETANS IN INDIA 161

and pearls than ever had been collected in the royal treasury
of any prince on earth.

Mahmud invested the place with such expedition that the
Hindus had not time to send troops into it for its defence — the
greater part of the garrison having been sent to the field. Those
within consisted, for the most part, of priests, who being ad-
verse to the bloody business of war, in a few days solicited
permission to capitulate. Their request being granted, they
opened the gates and fell upon their faces before Mahmud, who
with a few of his officers and attendants immediately entered
and took possession of the place.

In Bima were found: seven hundred thousand dinars; seven
hundred maunds of gold and silver plate; forty maunds of
pure gold in ingots; two thousand maunds of silver bullion,
and twenty maunds of various jewels set, which had been col-
lecting from the time of Buna. With this immense treasure
the King returned to Ghazni, and in the year A.H. 400 held
a magnificent festival, where he displayed to the people his
wealth in golden thrones, and in other rich receptacles, in a
great plain without the city of Ghazni; and after the feast every
individual received a princely gift.

In the following year Mahmud led his army toward
Ghor. The native prince of that country, Mahomet of the
Sur tribe of Afghans, with ten thousand troops, opposed him.
The King, finding that the troops of Ghor defended themselves
in their intrenchments with such obstinacy, commanded his
army to make a feint of retreating, to lure the enemy out of
their fortified camp, which manoeuvre proved successful. The
Ghorians, being deceived, pursued the army of Ghazni to the
plain, where the King, facing round with his troops, attacked
them with great impetuosity. Mahomet was taken prisoner
and brought to the King; but in his despair he had taken poison,
which he always kept under his ring, and died in a few hours.
His country was annexed to the dominion of Ghazni. Some
historians affirm that neither the sovereigns of Ghor nor its
inhabitants were Mussulmans till after this victory; while oth-
ers of good credit assure us that they were converted many
years before, even so early as the time of the famous Ali, the
son-in-law of the Prophet

«., VOL. V.— II.

162 MAHOMETANS IN INDIA

Mahmud, in the same year, was under the necessity of
marching again to Multan, which had revolted; but having
soon reduced it, and cut off a great number of the chiefs, he
brought Daud, the son of Nazir, the rebellious governor, pris-
oner to Ghazni, and imprisoned him in the fort of Gorci for life.

In the year A.H. 402, the passion of war fermenting in
the mind of Mahmud, he resolved upon the conquest of Tan-
nasar, in the kingdom of Hindustan. It had reached the ears
of the King that Tannasar was held in the same veneration by
idolaters as Mecca was by the Mahometans ; that there they
had set up a great number of idols, the chief of which they
called Jug Sum. This Jug Sum, they pretended to say, ex-
isted when as yet the world existed not. When the King
reached the country about the five branches of the Indus, he
desired that — according to the treaty that existed between him-
self and Annandpal — he should not be disturbed by his march
through that country. He accordingly sent an embassy to An-
nandpal, advising him of his intentions, and desiring him to
send guards for the protection of his towns and villages, which
he, the King, would take care should not be molested by the
followers of his camp.

Annandpal agreed to this proposal, and prepared an enter-
tainment for the reception of the King, issuing an order for all
his subjects to supply the royal camp with every necessary of
life. In the mean time he sent his brother with two thousand
horse to meet the King and deliver this message:

"That he was the subject and slave of the King; but that
he begged permission to acquaint his Majesty that Tannasar
was the principal place of worship of the inhabitants of that
country; that if it was a virtue required by the religion of
Mahmud to destroy the religion of others, he had already
acquitted himself of that duty to his God in the destruction
of the temple of Nagracot; but if he should be pleased to alter
his resolution against Tannasar, Annandpal would undertake
that the amount of the revenues of that country should be
annually paid to Mahmud, to reimburse the expense of his ex-
pedition: that besides, he, on his own part, would present him
with fifty elephants, and jewels to a considerable amount."

The King replied: "That in the Mahometan religion it

MAHOMETANS IN INDIA 163

was an established tenet that the more the glory of the Prophet
was exalted, and the more his followers exerted themselves in
the subversion of idolatry, the greater would be their reward
in heaven; that therefore it was his firm resolution, with the
assistance of God, to root out the abominable worship of idols
from the land of India: why then should he spare Tannasar ?"

When this news reached the Indian king of Delhi, he pre-
pared to oppose the invaders, sending messages all over Hin-
dustan to acquaint the rajahs that Mahmud, without any reason
or provocation, was marching with an innumerable army to
destroy Tannasar, which was under his immediate protection:
that if a dam was not expeditiously raised against this roaring
torrent, the country of Hindustan would soon be overwhelmed
in ruin, and the tree of prosperity rooted up; that therefore it
was advisable for them to join their forces at Tannasar, to op-
pose with united strength the impending danger. But Mah-
mud reached Tannasar before they could take any measure
for its defence, plundered the city and broke the idols, sending
Jug Sum to Ghazni, where he was soon stripped of his orna-
ments. He then ordered his head to be struck off and his
body to be thrown on the highway. According to the account
of the historian Hago Mahomet of Kandahar, there was a
ruby found in one of the temples which weighed four hundred
and fifty miskals!

Mahmud, after these transactions at Tannasar, proceeded
to Delhi, which he also took, and wanted greatly to annex to
his dominions, but his nobles told him that it was impossible
to keep the rajahship of Delhi till he had entirely subjected
Multan to Mahometan rule, destroyed the power and exter-
minated the family of Annandpal, Prince of Lahore, which lay
between Delhi and the northern dominions of Mahmud. The
King approved of this counsel, and immediately determined
to proceed no further against that country, till he had accom-
plished the reduction of Multan and Annandpal. But that
prince behaved with so much policy and hospitality that he
changed the purpose of the King, who returned to Ghazni.
He brought to Ghazni forty thousand captives and much
wealth, so that that city could now be hardly distinguished
in riches from India itself.

CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND

A.D. 1017

DAVID HUME

After the success of King Alfred over the Danes in the last quarter
of the ninth century, England enjoyed a considerable respite from the
invasions of the bold ravagers who had caused great suffering and loss
to the country. This immunity of England seems to have been partly
due to the fact that the Danish adventurers had gained a foothold in the
north of France, where they found all the employment they needed in
maintaining their establishments. Under the reign of Edward the Elder
— chosen to succeed Alfred — the English enjoyed an interval of com-
parative peace and industry. During this time and under the following
reigns, known as those of the Six Boy-Kings, the social side of life had
an opportunity to develop from a semi-barbarous to a more civilized
state. The bare and rough walls of hall and court were screened by
tapestry hangings, often of silk, and elaborately ornamented with birds
and flowers or scenes from the battlefield or the chase. Chairs and tables
were skilfully carved and inlaid with different woods and, among the
wealthier nobility, often decorated with gold and silver. Knives and
spoons were now used at table — the fork was to come many long years
later ; golden ornaments were worn ; and a variety of dishes were fash-
ioned, often of precious metals, brass, and even bone. The bedstead
became a household article, no longer looked upon with superstitious
awe ; and musical instruments — principally of the harp pattern — began
to find favor in their eyes, and were passed round from hand to hand,
like the drinking-bowl, at their rude festivals.

But toward the end of a century following the victories of Alfred the
Danes again threatened an invasion, and in 981-991 they made several
landings, in the latter year overrunning much territory. King Ethelred
(the " Unready ") procured their departure by bribery, which led the
Danes to repeat their visit the next year, following it up by a descent in
force under King Sweyn of Denmark and Olaf of Norway. They de-
feated the English in battle and ravaged a great part of the country, ex-
acting as before ruinous contributions from the already impoverished
people. After the siege and taking of London, 1011-1013, the flight of
the cowardly Ethelred to the court of Normandy, the sudden death of
Sweyn, who had been -but a few months before proclaimed King of Eng-
land, and the return of Ethelred to his throne, Canute, the son of Sweyn,

164

CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND 165

claimed the crown and ravaged the land in the manner and custom of
his race. The complications and strife engendered by the rival claims
of the Dane and Edmund (" Ironside "), son of Ethelred, and which ended
in the triumph of Canute and the complete subjugation of England, are
hereinafter narrated by Hume, the English historian.

'"THE Danes had been established during a longer period in
England than in France; and though the similarity of
their original language to that of the Saxons invited them to a
more early coalition with the natives, they had hitherto found
so little example of civilized manners among the English that
they retained all their ancient ferocity, and valued themselves
only on their national character of military bravery. The recent
as well as more ancient achievements of their countrymen
tended to support this idea; and the English princes, particu-
larly Athelstan and Edgar, sensible of that superiority, had been
accustomed to keep in pay bodies of Danish troops, who were
quartered about the country and committed many violences
upon the inhabitants. These mercenaries had attained to such
a height of luxury, according to the old English writers, that
they combed their hair once a day, bathed themselves once
a week, changed their clothes frequently; and by all these arts
of effeminacy, as well as by their military character, had ren-
dered themselves so agreeable to the fair sex that they de-
bauched the wives and daughters of the English and dishonored
many families. But what most provoked the inhabitants was
that, instead of defending them against invaders, they were ever
ready to betray them to the foreign Danes, and to associate
themselves with all straggling parties of that nation.

The animosity between the inhabitants of English and
Danish race had, from these repeated injuries, risen to a great
height, when Ethelred (1002), from a policy incident to weak
princes, embraced the cruel resolution of massacring the latter
throughout all his dominions. Secret orders were despatched
to commence the execution everywhere on the same day, and
the festival of St. Brice, which fell on a Sunday, the day on
which the Danes usually bathed themselves, was chosen for
that purpose. It is needless to repeat the accounts transmitted
concerning the barbarity of this massacre: the rage of the
populace, excited by so many injuries, sanctioned by authority,

166 CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND

and stimulated by example, distinguished not between innocence
and guilt, spared neither sex nor age, and was not satiated
without the tortures as well as death of the unhappy victims.
Even Gunhilda, sister to the King of Denmark, who had married
Earl Paling and had embraced Christianity, was, by the ad-
vice of Edric, Earl of Wilts, seized and condemned to death by
Ethelred, after seeing her husband and children butchered
before her face. This unhappy princess foretold, in the agonies
of despair, that her murder would soon be avenged by the total
ruin of the English nation.

Never was prophecy better fulfilled, and never did barbarous
policy prove more fatal to the authors. Sweyn and his Danes,
who wanted but a pretence for invading the English, appeared
off the western coast, and threatened to take full revenge for
the slaughter of their countrymen. Exeter fell first into their
hands, from the negligence or treachery of Earl Hugh, a Nor-
man, who had been made governor by the interest of Queen
Emma. They began to spread their devastations over the coun-
try, when the English, sensible what outrages they must now
expect from their barbarous and offended enemy, assembled
more early and in greater numbers than usual, and made an
appearance of vigorous resistance. But all these preparations
were frustrated by the treachery of Duke Alfric, who was in-
trusted with the command, and who, feigning sickness, refused
to lead the army against the Danes, till it was dispirited and
at last dissipated by his fatal misconduct. Alfric soon after
died, and Edric, a greater traitor than he, who had married the
King's daughter and had acquired a total ascendant over him,
succeeded Alfric in the government of Mercia and in the com-
mand of the English armies. A great famine, proceeding partly
from the bad seasons, partly from the decay of agriculture,
added to all the other miseries of the inhabitants. The country,
wasted by the Danes, harassed by the fruitless expeditions of
its own forces, was reduced to the utmost desolation, and at
last submitted (1007) to the infamy of purchasing a precarious
peace from the enemy by the payment of thirty thousand pounds.

The English endeavored to employ this interval in making
preparations against the return of the Danes, which they had
reason soon to expect. A law was made, ordering the pro-

CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND 167

prietors of eight hides of land to provide each a horseman and a
complete suit of armor, and those of three hundred and ten
hides to equip a ship for the defence of the coast. When this
navy was assembled, which must have consisted of near eight
hundred vessels, all hopes of its success were disappointed by
the factions, animosities, and dissensions of the nobility. Edric
had impelled his brother Brightric to prefer an accusation of
treason against Wolfnoth, governor of Sussex, the father of the
famous earl Godwin; and that nobleman, well acquainted with
the malevolence as well as power of his enemy, found no means
of safety but in deserting with twenty ships to the Danes.
Brightric pursued him with a fleet of eighty sail; but his ships
being shattered in a tempest, and stranded on the coast, he was
suddenly attacked by Wolfnoth, and all his vessels burned and
destroyed. The imbecility of the King was little capable of
repairing this misfortune. The treachery of Edric frustrated
every plan for future defence; and the English navy, discon-
certed, discouraged, and divided, was at last scattered into its
several harbors.

It is almost impossible, or would be tedious, to relate partic-
ularly all the miseries to which the English were henceforth
exposed. We hear of nothing but the sacking and burning of
towns; the devastation of the open country; the appearance
of the enemy in every quarter of the kingdom ; their cruel dili-
gence in discovering any corner which had not been ransacked
by their former violence. The broken and disjointed narration
of the ancient historians is here well adapted to the nature of
the war, which was conducted by such sudden inroads as
would have been dangerous even to a united and well-governed
kingdom, but proved fatal where nothing but a general con-
sternation and mutual diffidence and dissension prevailed. The
governors of one province refused to march to the assistance of
another, and were at last terrified from assembling their forces
for the defence of their own province. General councils were
summoned; but either no resolution was taken or none was
carried into execution. And the only expedient in which the
English agreed was the base and imprudent one of buying a
new peace from the Danes, by the payment of forty-eight thou-
sand pounds.

168 CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND

This measure did not bring them even that short interval
of repose which they had expected from it. The Danes, dis-
regarding all engagements, continued their devastations and
hostilities; levied a new contribution of eight thousand pounds
upon the county of Kent alone; murdered the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who had refused to countenance this exaction; and
the English nobility found no other resource than that of sub-
mitting everywhere to the Danish monarch, swearing allegiance
to him, and delivering him hostages for their fidelity. Ethelred,
equally afraid of the violence of the enemy and the treachery
of his own subjects, fled into Normandy (1013), whither he
had sent before him Queen Emma and her two sons, Alfred
and Edward. Richard received his unhappy guests with a
generosity that does honor to his memory.

The King had not been above six weeks in Normandy when
he heard of the death of Sweyn, who expired at Gainsborough
before he had time to establish himself in his new-acquired
dominions. The English prelates and nobility, taking advan-
tage of this event, sent over a deputation to Normandy, inviting
Ethelred to return to them, expressing a desire of being again
governed by their native prince, and intimating their hopes that,
being now tutored by experience, he would avoid all those errors
which had been attended with such misfortunes to himself and
to his people. But the misconduct of Ethelred was incurable;
and on his resuming the government, he discovered the same
incapacity, indolence, cowardice, and credulity which had so
often exposed him to the insults of his enemies. His son-in-law
Edric, notwithstanding his repeated treasons, retained such
influence at court as to instil into the King jealousies of Sigefert
and Morcar, two of the chief nobles of Mercia. Edric allured
them into his house, where he murdered them; while Ethelred
participated in the infamy of the action by confiscating their
estates and thrusting into a convent the widow of Sigefert.
She was a woman of singular beauty and merit; and in a visit
which was paid her, during her confinement, by Prince Ed-
mund, the King's eldest son, she inspired him with so violent
an affection that he released her from the convent, and soon
after married her without the consent of his father.

Meanwhile the English found in Canute, the son and sue-

CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND 169

cessor of Sweyn, an enemy no less terrible than the prince from
whom death had so lately delivered them. He ravaged the
eastern coast with merciless fury, and put ashore all the English
hostages at Sandwich, after having cut off their hands and
noses. He was obliged, by the necessity of his affairs, to make
a voyage to Denmark; but, returning soon after, he continued
his depredations along the southern coast. He even broke into
the counties of Dorset, Wilts, and Somerset, where an army
was assembled against him, under the command of Prince Ed-
mund and Duke Edric. The latter still continued his perfidious
machinations, and, after endeavoring in vain to get the prince
into his power, he found means to disperse the army, and he
then openly deserted to Canute with forty vessels.

Notwithstanding this misfortune Edmund was not discon-
certed, but, assembling all the force of England, was in a con-
dition to give battle to the enemy. The King had had such
frequent experience of perfidy among his subjects that he had
lost all confidence in them: he remained at London, pretending
sickness, but really from apprehensions that they intended to
buy their peace by delivering him into the hands of his enemies.
The army called aloud for their sovereign to march at their
head against the Danes; and, on his refusal to take the field,
they were so discouraged that those vast preparations became
ineffectual for the defence of the kingdom. Edmund, deprived
of all regular supplies to maintain his soldiers, was obliged to
commit equal ravages with those which were practised by the
Danes; and, after making some fruitless expeditions into the
north, which had submitted entirely to Canute's power, he re-
tired to London, determined there to maintain to the last ex-
tremity the small remains of English liberty. He here found
everything in confusion by the death of the King, who expired
after an unhappy and inglorious reign of thirty-five years (1016).
He left two sons by his first marriage, Edmund, who succeeded
him, and Edwy, whom Canute afterward murdered. His two
sons by the second marriage, Alfred and Edward, were, imme-
diately upon Ethelred's death, conveyed into Normandy by
Queen Emma.

Edmund, who received the name of "Ironside" from his
hardy valor, possessed courage and abilities sufficient to have

170 CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND

prevented his country from sinking into those calamities, but
not to raise it from that abyss of misery into which it had already
fallen. Among the other misfortunes of the English, treachery
and disaffection had crept in among the nobility and prelates;
and Edmund found no better expedient for stopping the further
progress of these fatal evils than to lead his army instantly into
the field, and to employ them against the common enemy.
After meeting with some success at Gillingham, he prepared
himself to decide, in one general engagement, the fate of his
crown ; and at Scoerston, in the county of Gloucester, he offered
battle to the enemy, who were commanded by Canute and Edric.
Fortune, in the beginning of the day, declared for him; but
Edric, having cut off the head of one Osmer, whose countenance
resembled that of Edmund, fixed it on a spear, carried it through
the ranks in triumph, and called aloud to the English that it
was time to fly; for, behold! the head of their sovereign. And
though Edmund, observing the consternation of the troops, took
off his helmet, and showed himself to them, the utmost he could
gain by his activity and valor was to leave the victory undecided.
Edric now took a surer method to ruin him, by pretending to
desert to him; and as Edmund was well acquainted with his
power, and probably knew no other of the chief nobility in
whom he could repose more confidence, he was obliged, not-
withstanding the repeated perfidy of the man, to give him a
considerable command in the army. A battle soon after ensued
at Assington, in Essex, where Edric, flying in the beginning of
the day, occasioned the total defeat of the English, followed
by a great slaughter of the nobility. The indefatigable Ed-
mund, however, had still resources. Assembling a new army at
Gloucester, he was again in condition to dispute the field, when
the Danish and English nobility, equally harassed with those
convulsions, obliged their kings to come to a compromise and to
divide the kingdom between them by treaty. Canute reserved
to himself the northern division, consisting of Mercia, East
Anglia, and Northumberland, which he had entirely subdued.
The southern parts were left to Edmund. This prince survived
the treaty about a month. He was murdered at Oxford by two
of his chamberlains, accomplices of Edric, who thereby made way
for the succession of Canute the Dane to the crown of England.

CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND 171

The English, who had been unable to defend their country
and maintain their independency under so active and brave
a prince as Edmund, could after his death expect nothing but
total subjection from Canute, who, active and brave himself,
and at the head of a great force, was ready to take advantage
of the minority of Edwin and Edward, the two sons of Edmund.
Yet this conqueror, who was commonly so little scrupulous,
showed himself anxious to cover his injustice under plausible
pretences. Before he seized the dominions of the English princes,
he summoned a general assembly of the states in order to fix
the succession of the kingdom. He here suborned some nobles
to depose that, in the treaty of Gloucester, it had been verbally
agreed, either to name Canute, in case of Edmund's death, suc-
cessor to his dominions or tutor to his children — for historians
vary in this particular; and that evidence, supported by the
great power of Canute, determined the states immediately to
put the Danish monarch in possession of the government.
Canute, jealous of the two princes, but sensible that he should
render himself extremely odious if he ordered them to be de-
spatched in England, sent them abroad to his ally, the King of
Sweden, whom he desired, as soon as they arrived at his court,
to free him, by their death, from all further anxiety. The
Swedish monarch was too generous to comply with the request ;
but being afraid of drawing on himself a quarrel with Canute,
by protecting the young princes, he sent them to Solomon, King
of Hungary, to be educated in his court. The elder, Edwin,
was afterward married to the sister of the King of Hungary ; but
the English prince dying without issue, Solomon gave his sister-
in-law, Agatha, daughter of the emperor Henry II, in marriage
to Edward, the younger brother; and she bore him Edgar,
Atheling, Margaret, afterward Queen of Scotland, and Chris-
tina, who retired into a convent.

Canute, though he had reached the great point of his ambi-
tion in obtaining possession of the English crown, was obliged
at first to make great sacrifices to it; and to gratify the chief of
the nobility, by bestowing on them the most extensive govern-
ments and jurisdictions. He created Thurkill Earl or Duke of
East Anglia — for these titles were then nearly of the same im-
port— Yric of Northumberland, and Edric of Mercia; reserving

172 CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND

only to himself the administration of Wessex. But seizing after-
ward a favorable opportunity, he expelled Thurkill and Yric
from their governments, and banished them the kingdom; he
put to death many of the English nobility, on whose fidelity
he could not rely, and whom he hated on account of their dis-
loyalty to their native prince. And even the traitor Edric, hav-
ing had the assurance to reproach him with his services, was
condemned to be executed and his body to be thrown into the
Thames; a suitable reward for his multiplied acts of perfidy
and rebellion.

Canute also found himself obliged, in the beginning of his
reign, to load the people with heavy taxes in order to reward
his Danish followers: he exacted from them at one time the
sum of seventy-two thousand pounds, besides eleven thousand
which he levied on London alone. He was probably willing,
from political motives, to mulct severely that city, on account of
the affection which it had borne to Edmund and the resistance
which it had made to the Danish power in two obstinate sieges.1
But these rigors were imputed to necessity; and Canute, like a
wise prince, was determined that the English, now deprived of
all their dangerous leaders, should be reconciled to the Dan-
ish yoke, by the justice and impartiality of his administration.
He sent back to Denmark as many of his followers as he could
safely spare; he restored the Saxon customs in a general as-
sembly of the states; he made no distinction between Danes
and English in the distribution of justice; and he took care, by
a strict execution of law, to protect the lives and properties of all
his people. The Danes were gradually incorporated with his
new subjects; and both were glad to obtain a little respite from
those multiplied calamities from which the one, no less than the
other, had, in their fierce contest for power, experienced such
fatal consequences.

The removal of Edmund's children into so distant a country
as Hungary was, next to their death, regarded by Canute as
the greatest security to his government: he had no further
anxiety, except with regard to Alfred and Edward, who were
protected and supported by their uncle Richard, Duke of Nor-

1 In one of these sieges Canute diverted the course of the Thames,
and by that means brought his ships above London bridge.

CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND 173

mandy. Richard even fitted out a great armament, in order
to restore the English princes to the throne of their ancestors;
and though the navy was dispersed by a storm, Canute saw the
danger to which he was exposed from the enmity of so warlike
a people as the Normans. In order to acquire the friendship
of the duke, he paid his addresses to Queen Emma, sister of
that prince, and promised that he would leave the children
whom he should have by that marriage in possession of the
Crown of England. Richard complied with his demand and
sent over Emma to England, where she was soon after married
to Canute. The English, though they disapproved of her
espousing the mortal enemy of her former husband and his
family, were pleased to find at court a sovereign to whom they
were accustomed, and who had already formed connections with
them; and thus Canute, besides securing, by this marriage, the
alliance of Normandy, gradually acquired, by the same means,
the confidence of his own subjects. The Norman prince did
not long survive the marriage of Emma; and he left the inheri-
tance of the duchy to his eldest son of the same name, who,
dying a year after him without children, was succeeded by his
brother Robert, a man of valor and abilities.

Canute, having settled his power in England beyond all
danger of a revolution, made a voyage to Denmark, in order to
resist the attacks of the King of Sweden; and he carried along
with him a great body of the English, under the command of
Earl Godwin. This nobleman had here an opportunity of
performing a service, by which he both reconciled the King's
mind to the English nation and, gaining to himself the friend-
ship of his sovereign, laid the foundation of that immense fort-
une which he acquired to his family. He was stationed next
the Swedish camp, and observing a favorable opportunity, which
he was obliged suddenly to seize, he attacked the enemy in the
night, drove them from their trenches, threw them into disorder,
pursued his advantage, and obtained a decisive victory over them.
Next morning Canute, seeing the English camp entirely aban-
doned, imagined that those disaffected troops had deserted to
the enemy: he was agreeably surprised to find that they were
at that time engaged in pursuit of the discomfited Swedes. He
was so pleased with this success, and with the manner of ob-

174 CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND

taining it, that he bestowed his daughter in marriage upon God-
win, and treated him ever after with entire confidence and
regard.

In another voyage, which he made afterward to Denmark,
Canute attacked Norway, and, expelling the just but unwarlike
Olaus, kept possession of his kingdom till the death of that
prince. He had now by his conquests and valor attained the
utmost height of grandeur: having leisure from wars and in-
trigues, he felt the unsatisfactory nature of all human enjoy-
ments; and equally weary of the glories and turmoils of this
life, he began to cast his view toward that future existence,
which it is so natural for the human mind, whether satiated
by prosperity or disgusted with adversity, to make the object
of its attention. Unfortunately, the spirit which prevailed in
that age gave a wrong direction to his devotion: instead of
making compensation to those whom he had injured by his
former acts of violence, he employed himself entirely in those
exercises of piety which the monks represented as the most
meritorious. He built churches, he endowed monasteries, he
enriched the ecclesiastics, and he bestowed revenues for the
support of chantries at Assington and other places, where he
appointed prayers to be said for the souls of those who had
there fallen in battle against him. He even undertook a pil-
grimage to Rome, where he resided a considerable time : be-
sides obtaining from the pope some privileges for the English
school erected there, he engaged all the princes through whose
dominions he was obliged to pass to desist from those heavy
impositions and tolls which they were accustomed to exact from
the English pilgrims. By this spirit of devotion, no less than
by his equitable and politic administration, he gained, in a good
measure, the affections of his subjects.

Canute, the greatest and most powerful monarch of his time,
sovereign of Denmark and Norway, as well as of England,
could not fail of meeting with adulation from his courtiers; a
tribute which is liberally paid even to the meanest and weakest
princes. Some of his flatterers, breaking out one day in admira-
tion of his grandeur, exclaimed that everything was possible for
him; upon which the monarch, it is said, ordered his chair to
be set on the sea-shore while the tide was rising; and as the

CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND 175

waters approached, he commanded them to retire, and to obey
the voice of him who was lord of the ocean. He feigned to sit
some time in expectation of their submission; but when the
sea still advanced toward him, and began to wash him with its
billows, he turned to his courtiers, and remarked to them that
every creature in the universe was feeble and impotent, and
that power resided with one Being alone, in whose hands were
all the elements of nature; who could say to the ocean, "Thus
far shalt thou go, and no farther," and who could level with
his nod the most towering piles of human pride and ambition.

The only memorable action which Canute performed after
his return from Rome was an expedition against Malcolm,
King of Scotland. During the reign of Ethelred, a tax of a shil-
ling a hide had been imposed on all the lands of England. It
was commonly called danegelt ; because the revenue had been
employed either in buying peace with the Danes or in making
preparations against the inroads of that hostile nation. That
monarch had required that the same tax should be paid by
Cumberland, which was held by the Scots; but Malcolm, a
warlike prince, told him that as he was always able to repulse
the Danes by his own power, he would neither submit to buy
peace of his enemies nor pay others for resisting them. Ethel-
red, offended at this reply, which contained a secret reproach
on his own conduct, undertook an expedition against Cumber-
land; but though he committed ravages upon the country, he
could never bring Malcolm to a temper more humble or sub-
missive. Canute, after his accession, summoned the Scottish
King to acknowledge himself a vassal for Cumberland to the
Crown of England; but Malcolm refused compliance, on pre-
tence that he owed homage to those princes only who inherited
that kingdom by right of blood. Canute was not of a temper
to bear this insult; and the King of Scotland soon found that
the sceptre was in very different hands from those of the feeble
and irresolute Ethelred. Upon Canute's appearing on the
frontiers with a formidable army, Malcolm agreed that his
grandson and heir, Duncan, whom he put in possession of
Cumberland, should make the submissions required, and that
the heirs of Scotland should always acknowledge themselves
vassals to England for that province.

176 CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND

Canute passed four years in peace after this enterprise, and
he died at Shaftesbury; leaving three sons, Sweyn, Harold, and
Hardicanute. Sweyn, whom he had by his first marriage with
Alfwen, daughter of the Earl of Hampshire, was crowned in
Norway; Hardicanute, whom Emma had borne him, was in
possession of Denmark; Harold, who was of the same marriage
with Sweyn, was at that time in England.

HENRY III DEPOSES THE POPE
THE GERMAN EMPIRE CONTROLS THE PAPACY

A.D. 1048

FERDINAND GREGOROVIUS JOSEPH E. DARRAS

After the extinction of the Carlovingian line, A.D. 887, and the divi-
sion of the empire, the Church of Rome and the Christian world fell into
a highly demoralized state, attributable to the destitution to which eccle-
siastical bodies were reduced by the frequent predations of bands of
robbers, the immorality of the priesthood, and the power of electing the
popes falling into the hands of intriguing and licentious patrician females,
whom aspirants to the holy see were not ashamed to bribe for their
favors. So depraved had the general spirit of the age become that Pope
Boniface VII, A.D. 974, robbed St. Peter's Church and its treasury and
fled to Constantinople ; while Pope John XVIII, A.D. 1003, was prevented,
by general indignation only, from accepting a sum of money from Em-
peror Basil to recognize the right of the Greek patriarch to the title of
" Universal Bishop."

A child, son of one of the old noble houses, was consecrated pope as
Benedict IX, A.D. 1033, according to some authorities, at the age of ten
or twelve years. He became noted for his profligacy and was driven
from his throne, the Romans electing, as Pope Sylvester III, John,
Bishop of Sabina, who is said to have paid a high price for the dignity.
Benedict, however, regained the papal seat shortly afterward, and drove
Sylvester into a refuge, but later sold the office to John Gratianus, Arch-
priest of Rome, who as Gregory VI made laudable attempts to effect a
general reformation. He failed in his efforts, and a chaotic state ensued ;
three popes claiming the triple tiara and reigning in Rome : Gregory at
the Vatican, Benedict in the Lateran, and Sylvester in the Church of
Santa Maria Maggiore.

On the invitation of the Roman people, Henry the Black, the young
and zealous Emperor of Germany, repaired to Italy in 1045 and sum-
moned a great ecclesiastical council at Sutri, which passed a decree de-
posing the three papal claimants. The same council elected to the tiara
the German bishop of Bamberg, who reigned in the holy see as Clement
II. One of his first ceremonies, carried out with all the gorgeous pomp
E., VOL. V.— -12. 177

i78 HENRY III DEPOSES POPES

of the Roman Church, was the imperial coronation of Henry and his
wife Agnes.

But Henry's action, while " it dragged the Church out of the slough
it had fallen into," startled the ecclesiastical world, and was a prelude to
the struggle between pope and emperor which, under St. Hildebrand,
Pope Gregory VII, culminated in the independent establishment of the
pontificate and papal power.

LJENRY III, the son and successor of Conrad, was young,
vigorous, and God-fearing; a noble prince called, like
Charles and Otto the Great, to restore Rome, to deliver it from
tyrants, and to reform the almost annihilated Church. For
the papacy had been still further dishonored by Benedict IX.
It seemed as if a demon from hell, in the disguise of a priest,
occupied the chair of Peter and profaned the sacred mysteries
of religion by his insolent courses.

Benedict IX, restored in 1038, protected by his brother
Gregory, who ruled the city as senator of the Romans, led
unchecked the life of a Turkish sultan in the palace of the
Lateran. He and his family filled Rome with robbery and
murder; all lawful conditions had ceased. Toward the end
of 1044, or in the beginning of the following year, the populace
at length rose in furious revolt; the Pope fled, but his vassals
defended the Leonina against the attacks of the Romans.
The Trasteverines remained faithful to Benedict, and he sum-
moned friends and adherents; Count Gerard of Galeria ad-
vanced with a numerous body of horse to the Saxon gate and
repulsed the Romans. An earthquake added to the horrors
in the revolted city. The ancient chronicle which relates these
events does not tell us whether Trastevere was taken by assault
after a three-days' struggle, but merely relates that the Romans
unanimously renounced Benedict, and elected Bishop John of
the Sabina to the papacy as Sylvester III. John also owed
his elevation to the gold with which he bribed the rebels and
their leader, Girardo de Saxo. This powerful Roman had
first promised his daughter in marriage to the Pope, and after-
ward refused her; for the Pope had not hesitated, in all serious-
ness, to sue for the hand of a Roman lady, a relative of his own.
Her father lured him on with the hope of winning her, but re-
quired that Benedict should in the first place resign the tiara.

HENRY III DEPOSES POPES 179

The Pope, burning with passion, consented and fulfilled his
promise during the revolt of the Romans. He was mastered
by the demon of sensuality; it was reported by the supersti-
tious that he associated with devils in the woods and attracted
women by means of spells. It was asserted that books of
magic, with which he had conjured demons, had been found in
the Lateran. His banishment meanwhile aroused the haughty
spirit of his house, and anger at Gerard's treacherous conduct
proved a further incentive to revenge. His numerous adher-
ents still held St. Angelo, and his gold acquired him new friends.
After a forty-nine days' reign, Sylvester III was driven from
the apostolic chair, which the Tusculan reascended in March,
1045.

Benedict now ruled for some tune in Rome, while Sylvester
III found safety either within some fortified monument in the
city or in some Sabine fortress, and continued to call himself
pope. A beneficent darkness veils the horrors of this year.
Hated by the Romans, insecure on his throne, in constant
terror of the renewal of the revolution, Benedict eventually
found himself obliged to abdicate. The abbot Bartholomew of
Grotta Ferrata urged him to the step, but he unblushingly
sold the papacy for money like a piece of merchandise. In
exchange for a considerable income, that is to say, for the
revenue of "Peter's pence" from England, he made over his
papal dignities by a formal contract to John Gratianus, a rich
archpriest of the Church of St. John at the Latin gate, on May
i, 1045.

Could the holiest office in Christendom be more deeply
outraged than by a sale such as this? And yet so general was
the traffic in ecclesiastical dignities throughout the world that
when a pope finally sold the chair of Peter the scandal did not
strike society as specially heinous.

John Gratian, or Gregory VI, set aside the canon law with
a defiant courage which perhaps was only understood by the
minority of his compatriots; he bought the papacy in order to
wrest it from the hands of a criminal, and this remarkable
Pope, although regarded as an idiot in that terrible period,
was possibly an earnest and high-minded man. Scarcely had
Peter Damiani knowledge of this traffic when he wrote to

i8o HENRY III DEPOSES POPES

Gregory VI on his elevation, rejoicing that the dove with the
olive branch had returned to the ark. The Saint may have
known the Pope personally and have been persuaded of his
spiritual virtues. Even the chroniclers of the time, who rep-
resent him — assuredly with injustice — as so rude and simple
that he was obliged to appoint a representative, are unable to
fasten any crime upon him. The Cluniacs in France and the
congregations of Italy all hailed his elevation as the beginning
of a better time, and side by side with this simonist Pope a
young and brave monk suddenly appears, who, after the heroic
exertions of a lifetime, was to raise the degenerate papacy to
a height hitherto undreamed of. Hildebrand first issues from
obscurity by the side of Gregory VI; he became the Pope's
chaplain, and this fact alone proves that Gregory was no idiot.
How far Hildebrand's activity already extended, whether he
had any share in Gregory's illegal elevation, we do not know;
but in the "representative" spoken of by the chronicles, we
may easily recognize the gifted young monk who was Greg-
ory's counsellor, and who later took the name of Gregory VII
in grateful recollection of his predecessor.

While Benedict IX pursued his wild career in Tusculum
or Rome, Gregory VI remained Pope for nearly two years.
His desire was to save the Church, which stood in need of a
drastic reform — and which soon afterward obtained it. The
papacy, lately a hereditary fief of the counts of Tusculum, was
utterly ruined; the dominium temporale, the ominous gift of
the Carlovingians, the box of Pandora in the hands of the Pope
from which a thousand evils had arisen, had disappeared,
since the Church could scarcely command the fortresses in the
immediate neighborhood of the city. A hundred lords, the
captains or vassals of the Pope, stood ready to fall upon Rome;
every road was infested with robbers, every pilgrim was robbed;
within the city the churches lay in ruins, while the priests ca-
roused. Daily assassinations made the streets insecure. Ro-
man nobles, sword in hand, forced their way into St. Peter's
itself to snatch the gifts which pious hands still placed upon
the altar.

The chronicler who describes this state of things extols
Gregory for having repressed it. The captains, it is true,

HENRY III DEPOSES POPES 181

besieged the city, but the Pope boldly assembled the militia,
restored a degree of order, and even conquered several for-
tresses in the district. Sylvester had apparently made an
attempt on Rome; he was, however, defeated by Gregory's
energy. The short and dark period of Gregory's pontificate
was terrible, and his severity toward the robbers soon made
him hated by the nobles and even by the equally rapacious
cardinals.

Whatever he may have done under the influence of French
and Italian monks to rescue the Church from its state of barbar-
ous confusion, it was — as in the time of Otto the Great — by
the German dictatorship alone that it could be saved. The
exertions of Gregory VI soon ceased to bear any result; his
means were exhausted, and his opponents gradually over-
powered him. So utter was the state of anarchy that it is said
that all three popes lived in the city at the same tune: one in
the Lateran, a second in St. Peter's, and a third in Santa Maria
Maggiore.

The eyes of the better citizens at length turned to the King
of Germany. The archdeacon Peter convoked a synod with-
out consulting Gregory, and it was here resolved urgently to
invite Henry to come and take the imperial crown and raise
the Church from the ruin into which it had fallen.

Henry, coming from Augsburg, crossed the Brenner, and
arrived at Verona in September, 1046, accompanied by a great
army and filled with the ardent desire of becoming the re-
former of the Church. No enemy opposed him, the bishops
and dukes, among them the powerful margrave Boniface of
Tuscany, did homage without delay. The Roman situation
was provisionally discussed at a great synod in Pavia. Gregory
VI now hastened to meet the King at Piacenza, where he
hoped to gain the monarch to his side. Henry, however, dis-
missed him with the explanation that his fate and that of the
antipopes would be canonically decided by a council.

Shortly before Christmas he assembled one thousand and
forty-six bishops and Roman clergy at Sutri. The three popes
were summoned, and Gregory and Sylvester III actually
appeared. Sylvester was deposed from his pontificate and
condemned to penance in a monastery. Gregory VI, however,

i8a HENRY III DEPOSES POPES

gave the council cause to doubt its competence to judge him.
Gregory, who was an upright man, or one at least conscious
of good intentions, consented publicly to describe the circum-
stances of his elevation, and was thereby forced to condemn
himself as guilty of simony and unworthy of the papal office.
He quietly laid down the insignia of the papacy, and his renun-
ciation did him honor. Henry, with the bishops and the mar-
grave Boniface, immediately started for the city, which did not
shut its gates against him; for Benedict II had hid himself in
Tusculum, and his brothers did not venture on any resistance.
Rome, weary of the Tusculum horrors, joyfully accepted the
German King as her deliverer. Never afterward was a king of
Germany received with such glad acclamations by the Roman
people; never again did any other effect such great results or
achieve the like changes. With the Roman expedition of Henry
III begins a new epoch in the history of the city, and more
especially of the Church. It seemed as if the waters of the
deluge had subsided, and as if men from the ark had landed
on the rock of Peter to give new races and new laws to a new
world. What law, that stern and terrible power which kills,
binds, and holds together, signifies in human affairs, has in-
deed been experienced by few periods so fully as by that with
which we have now to deal.

A synod, assembled in St. Peter's on December 23d, again
pronounced all three popes deposed, and a canonical pope had
consequently to be elected. Like Otto III before his corona-
tion, Henry had also at his side a man who was to wear the
tiara and to confer the crown upon himself.

Adalbert of Hamburg and Bremen having refused the
papacy, the King chose Suidger of Bamberg. The royal com-
mand was all that was required to place the candidate on the
sacred chair. Henry, however, would not violate any of the
canonical forms. As King of Germany he possessed no right
either over that city or yet over the papal election. The right
must first be conferred upon him, and this was done by a treaty
which he had already concluded with the Romans at Sutri.
"Roman Signors," said Henry at the second sitting of the synod
on December 24th, "however thoughtless your conduct may
hitherto have been, I still accord you liberty to elect a pope

HENRY III DEPOSES POPES 183

according to ancient custom; choose from among this assem-
bly whom you will."

The Romans replied: "When the royal majesty is present,
the assent to the election does not belong to us, and, when it is
lacking, you are represented by your patricius. For in the
affairs of the republic the patricius is not patricius of the pope,
but of the emperor. We admit that we have been so thought-
less as to appoint idiots as popes. It now behooves your im-
perial power to give the Roman republic the benefit of law,
the ornament of manners, and to lend the arm of protection
to the Church."

The senators of the year 1046, who so meekly surrendered
the valuable right to the German King, heeded not the shades
of Alberic and the three Crescentii; since these — their patri-
cians — would have accused them of treason.

The Romans of these days were, however, ready for any
sacrifice so that they obtained freedom from the Tusculum
tyranny. Nothing more clearly shows the utter depth of their
exhaustion and the extent of their sufferings than the light
surrender of a right which it had formerly cost Otto the Great
such repeated efforts to extort from the city. Rome made the
humiliating confession that she possessed no priest worthy of
the papacy, that the clergy in the city were rude and utter si-
monists. All other circumstances, moreover, forbade the elec-
tion of a Roman or even of an Italian to the papacy.

The Romans besought Henry to give them a good pope;
he presented the Bishop of Bamberg to the assenting clergy,
and led the reluctant candidate to the apostolic chair. Clem-
ent II, consecrated on Christmas Day, 1046, immediately placed
the imperial crown on Henry's head and on that of his wife
Agnes. There were still many Romans who had been eye-wit-
nesses of like transactions — that is to say, of papal election and
imperial coronation following one the other in immediate suc-
cession— in the case of Otto III and Henry V; who, as they
now saw the second German pope mount the chair of Peter,
may have recalled the fact that the first had only lived a few
sad years in Rome and had died in misery.

The coronation of Henry III was performed under such
significant conditions and in such perfect tranquillity that it

184 HENRY III DEPOSES POPES

offers the most fitting opportunity for describing in a few sen-
tences the ceremonial of the imperial coronation.

Since Charles the Great, these repeated ceremonies, with
the more frequent coronations or Lateran processions of the
popes, formed the most brilliant spectacle in Rome.

When the Emperor-elect approached with his wife and
retinue, he first took an oath to the Romans, at the little bridge
on the Neronian Field, faithfully to observe the rights and
usages of the city. On the day of the coronation he made his
entrance through the Porta Castella close to St. Angelo and here
repeated the oath. The clergy and the corporations of Rome
greeted him at the Church of Santa Maria Traspontina, on a
legendary site called the Terebinthus of Nero. The solemn
procession then advanced to the steps of the cathedral. Sen-
ators walked by the side of the King, the prefect of the city
carried the naked sword before him, and his chamberlains
scattered money.

Arrived at the steps he dismounted from his horse and,
accompanied by his retinue, ascended to the platform where
the Pope, surrounded by the higher clergy, awaited him sitting.
The King stooped to kiss the Pope's foot, tendered the oath
to be an upright protector of the Church, received from the
Pope the kiss of peace, and was adopted by him as the son of
the Church. With solemn song both King and Pope entered the
Church of Santa Maria in Turri, beside the steps of St. Peter's,
and here the King was formally made canon of the cathedral.
He then advanced, conducted by the Lateran count of the
palace and by the primicerius of the judges, to the silver door
of the cathedral, where he prayed, and the Bishop of Albano
delivered the first oration.

Innumerable mystic ceremonies awaited the King in St.
Peter's itself. Here, a short way from the entrance, was the
rota porphyretica, a round porphyry stone inserted in the pave-
ment, on which the King and Pope knelt. The imperial can-
didate here made his profession of faith, the Cardinal-bishop of
Portus placed himself in the middle of the rota and pronounced
the second oration. The King was then draped in new vest-
ments, was made a cleric in the sacristy by the Pope, was clad
with tunic, dalmatica, pluviale, mitre and sandals, and was

HENRY III DEPOSES POPES 185

then led to the altar of St. Maurice, whither his wife, after
similar but less fatiguing ceremonies, accompanied him. The
Bishop of Ostia here anointed the King on the right arm and
neck and delivered the third oration.

If the Emperor-elect were fitted by the dignity of his calling,
then the solemnity of the function, the mystic and tedious
pomp, the magnificent monotone of prayer and song in. the
ancient cathedral, hallowed by so many exalted memories,
must have stirred his inmost soul. The pinnacle of all human
ambition, the crown of Charles the Great, lay glittering before
his longing eyes on the altar of the Prince of the Apostles.
The Pope, however, first placed a ring on the finger of the
Anointed, as symbol of the faith, the permanence and strength
of his Catholic rule; with similar formulae girt him with the
sword, and finally placed the crown upon his head. "Take,"
he said, " the symbol of fame, the diadem of royalty, the crown,
the empire, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost; renounce the archfiend and all sins, be upright
and merciful, and live in such pious love that thou mayest here-
after receive the everlasting crown in company with the saints,
from our Lord Jesus Christ."

The church resounded with the Gloria and the Laudes:
" Life and victory to the Emperor, to the Roman and the Ger-
man army," and with the endless acclamations of the rude
soldiers who hailed their King in German, Slav, and Romance
tongues.

The Emperor divested himself of the symbols of the empire,
and now ministered to the Pope as subdeacon at mass. The
Count Palatine afterward removed the sandals, and put the red
imperial boots with the spurs of St. Maurice upon him. Where-
upon the entire procession, accompanied by the Pope, left the
church and advanced along the so-called "Triumphal Way,"
through the flower-bedecked city, amid the ringing of all the
bells, to the Lateran. At special stations were posted clergy
singing praises, and the schola or guilds placed to salute the
Emperor as he passed. Chamberlains scattered money before
and behind the procession, and all the scholae and the officials
of the palace received the presbyteriumor customary present of
money. A banquet closed the solemnities in the papal palace.

186 HENRY III DEPOSES THE POPE

Such are merely the barest outlines of an imperial corona-
tion of this period. The ceremonies, borrowed from Byzan-
tine pomp, had been established since Charles the Great, and
had remained essentially the same, although, in the course of
time, many details had been altered and others had been intro-
duced. The magnificence of these spectacles is no longer
rivalled by the pageantry of our days. The multitudes of dukes
and counts, of bishops and abbots, knights and nobles with
their retinues, the splendor of their attire, the strangeness of
their faces and then: tongues, the martial array of warriors, the
mystic magnificence of the papacy with all its orders in such
picturesque costume, the aspect of secular Rome, of judges and
senators, of consuls and times, of the militia with their banners,
in curious, motley, fantastic attire; lastly, as the sublime scene
of the drama, the stern, gloomy, ruinous city, through which
the procession solemnly advanced — all combined to produce a
picture of such mighty and universal historic interest that even
a Roman accustomed to the pomp of Trajan's period could not
have beheld it without feelings of astonishment.

These coronation processions restored to the city its char-
acter of metropolis. The Romans of the time might flatter
themselves that the emperors whom they elected still ruled the
universe. The strangers who flocked to the city freely dis-
tributed their gold, and the hungry populace could live for
weeks on the proceeds of the coronation.

J. E. DARRAS

The accession of Gregory VI was the harbinger of an
epoch of moral renaissance. The wise Pontiff, whose glory
it had been to free the Church from a disgraceful yoke,
proved himself worthy of the sovereign power, as much by
the zeal with which he wielded as by the noble disinterested-
ness with which he resigned it. He found the temporal do-
mains of the Church so far diminished that they hardly fur-
nished the Pope with the means of an honorable maintenance.
As guardian of the rights of the Church, he hurled an excom-
munication against the usurpers. The infuriated plunderers
marched upon Rome with an armed force. The Pope also
raised troops, took possession of St. Peter's church, drove out

HENRY in DEPOSES THE POPE 187

the wretches who stole the offerings laid upon the tombs of
the Apostles, took back several estates belonging to the domain
of the Church, and secured the safety of the roads, upon which
pilgrims no longer ventured to travel except in caravans. This
policy displeased the Romans, who had now become habitu-
ated to plunder. Their complaints induced Henry HI, King
of Germany, to hurry to Italy, and to summon a council at
Sutri, during the Christmas festival, to inquire whether the
election of Gregory should be regarded as simoniacal. The
Pope and the clergy entertained the sincere conviction that
they were justified in bringing about, even by means of money,
the abdication of the unworthy Benedict, thus to end the
scandal which so foully disgraced the Holy See. As opinions
were divided on this point, Gregory VI, to set all doubts at
rest, stripped himself, with his own hands, of the Pontifical
vestments, and gave up to the bishops his pastoral staff.
Having given to the world this noble example of self-denial,
Gregory withdrew to the monastery of Cluny, bearing with
him the consciousness of a great duty done. He died in that
holy solitude in the odor of sanctity.

The see left vacant by the magnanimous humility of
Gregory VI was bestowed, by general consent, upon Suidger,
bishop of Bamberg, whom King Henry had brought with him
to Rome. The new Pope, whose elevation was due only to
universally known and acknowledged virtues, took the name
of Clement II, and was crowned on Christmas-Day (A.D.
1046); in the same solemnity he bestowed the imperial title
and crown upon Henry III, and his queen, Agnes, daughter of
William, duke of Aquitaine.

The Emperor Henry, during his sojourn in Rome, sent
for St. Peter Damian to assist the Pope by his counsels. The
illustrious religious thus wrote to the Pontiff, in excuse for
not complying: "Notwithstanding the Emperor's request, so
expressive of his benevolence in my regard, I cannot devote to
journeys the time which I have promised to consecrate to
God in solitude. I send the imperial letter in order that
your Holiness may decide, if it become necessary. My soul is
weighed down with grief when I see the churches of our
provinces plunged into shameful confusion througn the fault of

i88 HENRY III DEPOSES THE POPE

bad bishops and abbots. What does it profit us to learn that
the Holy See has been brought out from darkness into the
light, if we still remain buried in the same gloom of ignominy?
But we hope that you are destined to be the savior of Israel.
Labor then, Most Holy Father, once more to raise up the
kingdom of justice, and use the vigor of discipline to humble
the wicked and to raise the courage of the good."

On his return to Germany, Henry took the Pope with
him. The city of Beneventum refused to open its gates to the
Sovereign Pontiff, who, at the Emperor's request, pronounced
against it a sentence of excommunication. Clement made but
a short visit to his native land, and hastened back to Rome.
His apostolic zeal led him to visit, in person, the churches of
Umbria, the deplorable condition of which he had learned
from the letter of St. Peter Damian. On reaching the monas-
tery of St. Thomas of Aposello, he was seized with a mortal
disease, before having accomplished the object of his journey.
His last thought was for his beloved church of Bamberg, to
which he sent, from his dying couch, a confirmation of all
its former privileges, assuring it, in the most touching terms,
of his unchanging affection.

DISSENSION AND SEPARATION OF THE
GREEK AND ROMAN CHURCHES

A.D. 1054

HENRY FANSHAWE TOZER JOSEPH DEHARBE

In the division of the Greek Catholic Church from that at Rome,
Protestant writers see a very natural and legitimate separation of two
equal powers. Roman Catholics, regarding the Papal supremacy as
established from the beginning, treat the division as a plot by evil and
malignant men. Both viewpoints are here given.

The Eastern — or Greek Christian — Church, now known as the Holy
Orthodox, Catholic, Apostolic, Oriental Church, first assumed individu-
ality at Ephesus, and in the catechetical school of Alexandria, which
flourished after A.D. 180. It early came into conflict with the Western
or Roman Church: "the Eastern Church enacting creeds, and the West-
ern Church discipline."

In the third century, Dionysius, Bishop of Rome, accused the Patri-
arch of Alexandria of error in points of faith, but the Patriarch vindicated
his orthodoxy. Eastern monachism arose about 300; the Church of
Armenia was founded about the same year; and the Church of Georgia
or Iberia in 340.

Constantine the Great caused Christianity to be recognized through-
out the Roman Empire, and in 325 convened the first ecumenical or gen-
eral Council at Nicsea (Nice), when Arius, excommunicated for heresy
by a provincial synod at Alexandria in 321, defended his views, but was
condemned. Arianism long maintained a theological and political impor-
tance in the East and among the Goths and other nations converted by
Arian missionaries. In A.D. 330, Constantine removed the capital of the
Roman Empire to Constantinople, and thence dates, the definite estab-
lishment of the Greek Church and the serious rivalry with the Roman
Church over claims of preeminence, differences of doctrine and ritual,
charges of heresy and inter-excommunications, which ended in the final
separation of the churches in 1054.

In A.D. 461, the churches of Egypt, Syria, and Armenia separated
from the Church of Constantinople, over the Monophysite controversy
on the single divine or single compound nature of the Son; in 634 the
struggle with Mahometanism began; in 676 the Maronites of Lebanon
formed a strong sect, which, in 1182, joined the Roman Church. In 988,
Vladimir the Great of Russia founded the the Graeco-Russian Church, in
which the Greek Church found a refuge, when Mahometanism was estab-
lished at Constantinople, after its capture by the Turks in 1453.

189

SEPARATION OF THE CHURCHES

HPHE separation of the Eastern and Western churches, which
finally took place in the year 1054, was due to the operation
of influences which had been at work for several centuries be-
fore. From very early times a tendency to divergence existed,
arising from the tone of thought of the dominant races in the
two, the more speculative Greeks being chiefly occupied with
purely theological questions, while the more practical Roman
mind devoted itself rather to subjects connected with the nature
and destiny of man. In differences such as these there was
nothing irreconcilable: the members of both communions pro-
fessed the same forms of belief, rested their faith on the same
divine persons, were guided by the same standard of morals,
and were animated by the same hopes and fears; and they were
bound by the first principles of their religion to maintain unity
with one another. But in societies, as in individuals, inherent
diversity of character is liable to be intensified by time, and
thus counteracts the natural bonds of sympathy, and prevents
the two sides from seeing one another's point of view. In this
way it cooperates with and aggravates the force of other causes
of disunion, which adverse circumstances may generate. Such
causes there were in the present instance, political, ecclesiastical,
and theological; and the nature of these it may be well for us
to consider, before proceeding to narrate the history of the dis-
ruption.

The office of bishop of Rome assumed to some extent a
political character as early as the time of the first Christian
emperors. By them this prelate was constituted a sort of secre-
tary of state for Christian affairs, and was employed as a central
authority for communicating with the bishops in the provinces,
so that after a while he acted as minister of religion and public
instruction. As the civil and military power of the Western
Empire declined, the extent of this authority increased; and
by the time when Italy was annexed to the Empire of the East,
in the reign of Justinian, the popes had become the political
chiefs of Roman society. Nominally, indeed, they were subject
to the exarch of Ravenna, as vicegerent of the Emperor at Con-
stantinople, but in reality the inhabitants of Western Europe
were more disposed to look to the spiritual potentate in the
Imperial city as representing the traditions of ancient Rome.

SEPARATION OF THE CHURCHES 191

The political rivalry that was thus engendered was sharpened
by the traditional jealousy of Rome and Constantinople, which
had existed ever since the new capital had been erected on the
shores of the Bosporus. Then followed struggles for admin-
istrative superiority between the popes and the exarchs, culmi-
nating in the shameful maltreatment and banishment of Martin
I by the emperor Constans — an event which the See of Rome
could never forget.

The attempt to enforce iconoclasm in Central Italy was
influential in causing the loss of that province to the Empire;
and even after the Byzantine rule had ceased there, the contro-
versy about images tended to keep alive the antagonism, because,
although that question was once and again settled in favor of
the maintenance of images, yet many of the emperors, in whose
persons the power of the East was embodied, were foremost
in advocating their destruction. Indeed, from first to last, owing
to the close connection of church and state in the Byzantine
empire, the unpopularity of the latter in Western Europe was
shared by the former. To this must be added the contempt
for one another's character which had arisen among the adher-
ents of the two churches, for the Easterns had learned to regard
the people of the West as ignorant and barbarous, and were
esteemed by them in turn as mendacious and unmanly.

In ecclesiastical matters also the differences were of long
standing. These related to questions of jurisdiction between
the two patriarchates. Up to the eighth century, the patri-
archate of the West included a number of provinces on the
eastern side of the Adriatic — Illyricum, Dacia, Macedonia, and
Greece. But Leo the Isaurian, who probably foresaw that
Italy would ere long cease to form part of his" dominions, and
was unwilling that these important territories should own spirit-
ual allegiance to one who was not his subject, altered this ar.
rangement, and transferred the jurisdiction over them to th«
Patriarch of Constantinople. Against this measure the bishops
of Rome did not fail to protest, and demands for their restora-
tion were made up to the time of the final schism. A further
ecclesiastical question, which in part depended on this, was that
of the Church of the Bulgarians. The prince Bogoris had
swayed to and fro in his inclinations between the two churches,

I92 SEPARATION OF THE CHURCHES

and had ultimately given his allegiance to that of the East; but
the controversy did not end there. According to the ancient
territorial arrangement the Danubian provinces were made
subject to the archbishopric of Thessalonica, and that city was
included within the Western patriarchate; and on this ground
Bulgaria was claimed by the Roman see as falling within that
area. The matter was several times pressed on the attention
of the Greek Church, especially on the occasion of the council
held at Constantinople in 879, but in vain. The Eastern prel-
ates replied evasively, saying that to determine the boundaries
of dioceses was a matter which belonged to the sovereign. The
Emperor, for his part, had good reason for not yielding, for by
so doing he would not only have admitted into a neighboring
country an agency which would soon have been employed for
political purposes to his disadvantage, but would have justified
the assumption on which the demand rested, viz., that the pope
had a right to claim the provinces which his predecessors had
lost. Thus this point of difference also remained open, as a
source of irritation between the two churches.

But behind these questions another of far greater magni-
tude was coming into view, that of the papal supremacy. From
being in the first instance the head of the Christian church in
the old Imperial city, and afterward Patriarch of the West, and
primus inter pares in relation to the other spiritual heads of
Christendom, the bishop of Rome had gradually claimed, on
the strength of his occupying the cathedra Petri, a position which
approximated more and more to that of supremacy over the
whole Church. This claim had never been admitted in the
East, but the appeals which were made from Constantinople to
his judgment and authority, both at the tune of the iconoclastic
controversy and subsequently, lent some countenance to its va-
lidity.

But the great advance was made in the pontificate of Nicho-
las I (858-867), who promulgated, or at least recognized, the
False Decretals. This famous compilation, which is now uni-
versally acknowledged to be spurious, and can be shown to be the
work of that period, contains, among other documents, letters
and decrees of the early bishops of Rome, in which the organi-
zation and discipline of the Church from the earliest time are

set forth, and the whole system is shown to have depended on
the supremacy of the popes. The newly discovered collection
was recognized as genuine by Nicholas, and was accepted by
the Western Church. The effect of this was at once to formu-
late all the claims which had before been vaguely asserted, and
to give them the authority of unbroken tradition. The result
to Christendom at large was in the highest degree momentous.
It was impossible for future popes to recede from them, and
equally impossible for other churches which valued their inde-
pendence to acknowledge them. The last attempt on the part
of the Eastern Church to arrange a compromise in this matter
was made by the emperor Basil II, a potentate who both by
his conquests and the vigor of his administration might rightly
claim to negotiate with others on equal terms. By him it was
proposed (A.D. 1024) that the Eastern Church should recognize
the honorary primacy of the Western patriarch, and that he in
turn should acknowledge the internal independence of the
Eastern Church. These terms were rejected, and from that
moment it was clear that the separation of the two branches of
Christendom was only a question of time.

Already in the papacy of Nicholas I a rupture had occurred
in connection with the dispute between the rival patriarchs of
Constantinople, Ignatius and Photius. The former of these
prelates, who was son of the emperor Michael I, and a man of
high character and a devout opponent of iconoclasm, was ap-
pointed, through the influence of Theodora, the restorer of
images, in the reign of her son, Michael the Drunkard. But
the uncle of the Emperor, the Cassar Bardas, who was a man of
flagrantly immoral life, had divorced his owji wife, and was
living publicly with his son's widow. For this incestuous con-
nection Ignatius repelled him from the communion. Fired with
indignation at this insult, the Caesar determined to ruin both
the Patriarch and his patroness, the Empress-mother, and with
this view persuaded the Emperor to free himself from the tram-
mels of his mother's influence by forcing her to take monastic
vows. To this step Ignatius would not consent, because it was
forbidden by the laws of the Church that any should enter on
the monastic life except of their own free will. In consequence
of his resistance a charge of treasonable correspondence was
E., VOL. v. — 13.

i94 SEPARATION OF THE CHURCHES

invented against him, and when he refused to resign his office
he was deposed (857). Photius, who was chosen to succeed
him, was the most learned man of his age, and like his rival,
unblemished in character and a supporter of images, but bound-
less in ambition. He was a layman at the time of his appoint-
ment, but in six days he passed through the inferior orders
which led up to the patriarchate. Still, the party that remained
faithful to Ignatius numbered many adherents, and therefore
Photius thought it well to enlist the support of the Bishop of
Rome on his side. An embassy was therefore sent to inform
Pope Nicholas that the late Patriarch had voluntarily retired,
and that Photius had been lawfully chosen, and had undertaken
the office with great reluctance. In answer to this appeal the
Pope despatched two legates to Constantinople, and Ignatius
was summoned to appear before a council at which they were
present. He was condemned, but appealed to the Pope in per-
son.

On the return of the legates to Rome it was discovered
that they had received bribes, and thereupon Nicholas, whose
judgment, however imperious, was ever on the side of the op-
pressed, called together a synod of the Roman Church, and
refused his consent to the deposition of Ignatius. To this effect
he wrote to the authorities of the Eastern Church, calling upon
them at the same time to concur in the decrees of the apostolic
see; but subsequently, having obtained full information as to
the harsh treatment to which the deposed Patriarch had been
subjected, he excommunicated Photius, and commanded the
restoration of Ignatius "by the power committed to him by
Christ through St. Peter."

These denunciations produced no effect on the Emperor and
the new Patriarch, and a correspondence between Michael and
Nicholas, couched in violent language, continued at intervals
for several years. At last, in consequence of a renewed demand
on the part of the Pope that Ignatius and Photius should be
sent to Rome for judgment, the latter prelate, whose ability
and eloquence had obtained great influence for him, summoned
a council at Constantinople in the year 867, to decree the counter-
excommunication of the Western Patriarch. Of the eight
articles which were drawn up on this occasion for the incrimi-

SEPARATION OF THE CHURCHES 195

nation of the Church of Rome, all but two relate to trivial mat-
ters, such as the observance of Saturday as a fast, and the
shaving of their beards by the clergy. The two important ones
deal with the doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Spirit, and
the enforced celibacy of the clergy.

The condemnation of the Western Church on these grounds
was voted, and a messenger was despatched to bear the defiance
to Rome; but ere he reached his destination he was recalled,
in consequence of a revolution in the palace at Constantinople.
The author of this, Basil the Macedonian, the founder of the
most important dynasty that ever occupied the throne of the
Eastern Empire, had for some time been associated in the
government with the emperor Michael; but at length, being
fearful for his own safety, he resolved to put his colleague out
of the way, and assassinated him during one of his fits of drunk-
enness.

It is said that in consequence of this crime Photius refused
to admit him to the communion; anyhow, one of the first acts
of Basil was to depose Photius. A council, hostile to him, was
now assembled, and was attended by the legates of the new
pope, Hadrian II (869). By this Ignatius was restored to his
former dignity, while Photius was degraded and his ordinations
were declared void. So violent was the animosity displayed
against him that he was dragged before the assembly by the
Emperor's guard, and his condemnation was written in the
sacramental wine. During the ten years which elapsed between
his restoration and his death Ignatius continued to enjoy his
high position in peace, but for Photius other vicissitudes were
in store.

On the removal of his rival, so strangely did opinion sway
to and fro at this time in the empire, the current of feeling set
strongly in favor of the learned exile. He was recalled, and his
reinstatement was ratified by a council (879). But with the
death of Basil the Macedonian (886), he again fell from power,
for the successor of that Emperor, Leo the Philosopher, ignomin-
iously removed him, in order to confer the dignity on his brother
Stephen. He passed the remainder of his life in honorable
retirement, and by his death the chief obstacle in the way of
reconcilement with the Roman Church was removed. It is

196 SEPARATION OF THE CHURCHES

consoling to learn, when reading of the unhappy rivalry of the
two men so superior to the ordinary run of Byzantine prelates,
that they never shared the passions of their respective partisans,
but retained a mutual regard for one another.

We have now to consider the doctrinal questions which were
in dispute between the two churches. Far the most important
of these was that relating to the addition of the Filioque clause
to the Nicene Creed. In the first draft of the Creed, as pro-
mulgated by the council of Nicaea, the article relating to the
Holy Spirit ran simply thus : " I believe in the Holy Ghost." But
in the Second General Council, that of Constantinople, which
condemned the heresy of Macedonius, it was thought advisable
to state more explicitly the doctrine of the Church on this sub-
ject, and among other affirmations the clause was added, " who
proceedeth from the Father." Again, at the next general
council, at Ephesus, it was ordered that it should not be lawful
to make any addition to the Creed, as ratified by the Council
of Constantinople. The followers of the Western Church, how-
ever, generally taught that the Spirit proceeds from the Son as
well as from the Father, while those of the East preferred to use
the expression, "the Spirit of Christ, proceeding from the
Father, and receiving of the Son," or, "proceeding from the
Father through the Son." It was in the churches of Spain and
France that the Filioque clause was first introduced into the
Creed and thus recited in the services, but the addition was not
at once approved at Rome. Pope Leo III, early in the ninth
century, not only expressed his disapproval of this departure
from the original form, but, in order to show his sense of the
importance of adhering to the traditional practice, caused the
Creed of Constantinople to be engraved on silver plates, both
in Greek and Latin, and thus to be publicly set forth in the
Church. The first pontiff who authorized the addition was
Nicholas I, and against this Photius protested, both during the
lifetime of that Pope and also in the time of John VIII, when
it was condemned by the council held at Constantinople in 879,
which is called by the Greeks the Eighth General Council. It
is clear from what we have already seen that Photius was pre-
pared to seize on any point of disagreement in order to throw
it in the teeth of his opponents, but in this matter the Eastern

SEPARATION OF THE CHURCHES 197

Church had a real grievance to complain of. The Nicene Creed
was to them what it was not to the Western Church, their only
creed, and the authority of the councils, by which its form and
wording were determined, stood far higher in their estimation.
To add to the one and to disregard the other were, at least in
their judgment, the violation of a sacred compact.

The other question, which, if not actually one of doctrine,
had come to be regarded as such, was that of the azyma, that
is, the use of unfermented bread in the celebration of the eucha-
rist. As far as one can judge from the doubtful evidence on
the subject, it seems probable that ordinary, that is, leavened
bread, was generally used in the church for this purpose until
the seventh or eighth century, when unleavened bread began
to be employed in the West, on the ground that it was used in
the original institution of the sacrament, which took place
during the Feast of the Passover. In the Eastern Church this
change was never admitted. It seems strange that so insignifi-
cant a matter of observance should have been erected into a
question of the first importance between the two communions,
but the reason of this is not far to seek. The fact is that, whereas
the weighty matters of dispute — the doctrine of the Procession
of the Holy Spirit, and the papal claims to supremacy — re-
quired some knowledge and reflection hi order rightly to under-
stand their bearings, the use of leavened or unleavened bread
was a matter within the range of all, and those who were on the
lookout for a ground of antagonism found it here ready to
hand.

In the story of the conversion of the Russian Vladimir we
are told that the Greek missionary who expounded to him the
religious views of the Eastern Church, when combating the
claims of the emissaries of the Roman communion, remarked:
"They celebrate the mass with unleavened bread; therefore
they have not the true religion." Still, even Photius, when rak-
ing together the most minute points of difference between him
and his adversaries, did not introduce this one. It was reserved
for a hot-headed partisan at a later period to bring forward as
a subject of public discussion.

This was Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople,
with whose name the Great Schism will forever be associated.

198 SEPARATION OF THE CHURCHES

The circumstances which led up to that event are as follows:
For a century and a half from the death of Photius the contro-
versy slumbered, though no advance was made toward an
understanding with respect to the points at issue. In Italy,
and even at Rome, churches and monasteries were tolerated
in which the Greek rite was maintained, and similar freedom
was allowed to the Latins resident in the Greek empire. But
this tacit compact was broken in 1053 by the patriarch Michael,
who, in his passionate antagonism to everything Western, gave
orders that all the churches in Constantinople in which worship
was celebrated according to the Roman rite should be closed.
At the same time — aroused, perhaps, in some measure by the
progress of the Normans in conquering Apulia, which tended
to interfere with the jurisdiction still exercised by the Eastern
Church in that province — he joined with Leo, the archbishop
of Achrida and metropolitan of Bulgaria, in addressing a letter
to the Bishop of Trani in Southern Italy, containing a violent
attack on the Latin Church, in which the question of the azyma
was put prominently forward.

Directions were further given for circulating this missive
among the Western clergy. It happened that at the time when
the letter arrived at Trani, Cardinal Humbert, a vigorous
champion of ecclesiastical rights, was residing in that city, and
he translated it into Latin and communicated it to Pope Leo
IX. In answer, the Pope addressed a remonstrance to the
Patriarch, in which, without entering into the specific charges
that he had brought forward, he contrasted the security of the
Roman See in matters of doctrine, arising from the guidance
which was guaranteed to it through St. Peter, with the liability
of the Eastern Church to fall into error, and pointedly referred
to the more Christian spirit manifested by his own communion
in tolerating those from whose opinions they differed. After-
ward, at the commencement of 1054, in compliance with a re-
quest from the emperor Constantine Monomachus, who was
anxious on political grounds to avoid a rupture, he sent three
legates to Constantinople to arrange the terms of an agreement.
These were Frederick of Lorraine, Chancellor of the Roman
Church; Peter, Archbishop of Amain, and Cardinal Hum-
bert.

SEPARATION OF THE CHURCHES 199

The legates were welcomed by the Emperor, but they un-
wisely adopted a lofty tone toward the haughty Patriarch, who
thenceforward avoided all communication with them, declaring
that on a matter which so seriously affected the whole Eastern
Church he could take no steps without consulting the other
patriarchs. Humbert now published an argumentative reply to
Michael's letter to the Pope, in the form of a dialogue between
two members of the Greek and Latin churches, in which the
charges brought against his own communion were discussed
seriatim, and especially those relating to fasting on Saturday
and the use of unleavened bread in the eucharist. A rejoinder
to this appeared from the pen of a monk of the monastery tf
Studium, Nicetas Pectoratus, in which the enforced celibacy
of the Western clergy, on which Photius had before animad-
verted, was severely criticised. The Cardinal retorted in in-
temperate language, and so entirely had the legates secured the
support of Constantine that Nicetas' work was committed to
the flames, and he was forced to recant what he had said against
the Roman Church. But the Patriarch was immovable, and
for the moment he occupied a stronger position than the Em-
peror, who desired to conciliate him. At last the patience of the
legates was exhausted, and on July 16, 1054, they proceeded
to the Church of St. Sophia, and deposited on the altar, which
was prepared for the celebration of the eucharist, a document
containing a fierce anathema, by which Michael Cerularius and
his adherents were condemned. After their departure they
were for a moment recalled, because the Patriarch expressed a
desire to confer with them; but this Constantine would not per-
mit, fearing some act of violence on the part of the people. They
then finally left Constantinople, and from that time to the pres-
ent all communion has been broken off between the two great
branches of Christendom.

The breach thus made was greatly widened at the period of
the crusades. However serious may have been the alienation
between the East and West at the tune of their separation, it is
clear that the Greeks were not regarded by the Latins as a mere
heretical sect, for one of the primary objects with which the First
Crusade was undertaken was the deliverance of the Eastern
Empire from the attacks of the Mahometans. But the familiarity

200 SEPARATION OF THE CHURCHES

which arose from the presence of the crusaders on Greek soil
ripened the seeds of mutual dislike and distrust. As long as
negotiations between the two parties took place at a distance,
the differences, however irreconcilable they might be in prin-
ciple, did not necessarily bring them into open antagonism,
whereas their more intimate acquaintance with one another
produced personal and national ill-will. The people of the
West now appeared more than ever barbarous and overbearing,
and the Court of Constantinople more than ever senile and de-
signing. The crafty policy of Alexius Comnenus in trans-
ferring his allies with all speed into Asia, and declining to take
the lead in the expedition, was almost justified by the necessity
of delivering his subjects from these unwelcome visitors and
avoiding further embarrassments. But the iniquitous Fourth
Crusade (1204) produced an ineradicable feeling of animosity
in the minds of the Byzantine people. The memory of the
barbarities of that time, when many Greeks died as martyrs
at the stake for their religious convictions, survives at the
present day in various places bordering on the ^Egean, in
legends which relate that they were formerly destroyed by
the Pope of Rome.

Still, the anxiety of the Eastern emperors to maintain their
position by means of political support from Western Europe
brought it to pass that proposals for reunion were made on
several occasions. The final attempt at reconciliation was
made when the Greek empire was reduced to the direst straits,
and its rulers were prepared to purchase the aid of Western
Europe against the Ottomans by almost any sacrifice. Ac-
cordingly, application wa made to Pope Eugenius IV, and
by him the representatives of the Eastern Church were in-
vited to attend the- council which was summoned to meet at
Ferrara in 1438. The Emperor, John Palaeologus and the
Greek patriarch Joseph proceeded thither.

The Emperor, however, on his return home, soon discov-
ered that his pilgrimage to the West had been lost labor. Pope
Eugenius, indeed, provided him with two galleys and a guard
of three hundred men, equipped at his own expense, but the
hoped-for succors from Western Europe did not arrive. His
own subjects were completely alienated by the betrayal of their

SEPARATION OF THE CHURCHES 201

cherished faith; the clergy who favored the union were re-
garded as traitors. John Palseologus himself did not survive
to see the final catastrophe; but Constantinople was captured
by the Turks, and the Empire of the East ceased to exist.

JOSEPH DEHARBE

The bonds so often and so painfully knit between the
Eastern and Western churches were destined at last to be
completely torn asunder, and the truth of our Lord's words,
"Who is not for Me, is against Me," was again to be proved.
The Greek schism places strikingly before our eyes the fate
of such churches as supinely yield their rights and indepen-
dence, and submit willingly to State tyranny. In the year
857 the wicked Bardas, uncle to the reigning Emperor, who
wielded an almost absolute power and disregarded all laws,
human and divine, unjustly banished from his See, Ignatius, the
rightful patriarch of Constantinople, and placed in his stead
the learned, but worthless, Photius. Such bishops as refused
to recognize the intruder (who had received all the orders
in six days from an excommunicated bishop) were deposed,
imprisoned and exiled.

Photius tried, by cruel ill-treatment, to force the aged
Ignatius to abdicate, and by a well-contrived fabrication en-
deavored to obtain the support of Pope Nicholas I. When,
however, this great Pope learned the true facts of the case
from the imprisoned Ignatius, he assembled a synod in Rome
in 864, by which Photius and all the bishops whom he had
consecrated were deposed. Fired by ambition, Photius now
threw off all concealments. He summoned the bishops of
his own party, laid various charges against the Roman Church,
and in his inconsiderate rage ended by anathematising the
holy Father. Pope Nicholas, in a most powerful letter,
exhorted the Emperor Michael III to set bounds to the dis-
orders of Photius, warning him that a fearful judgment would
await him if the faithful were misled and so many believers
caused to swerve from the right path. It was not, however,
till the reign of his successor that Photius was banished and
the much-tried St. Ignatius restored to his rights.

To remedy the evil brought about by Photius, the eighth

202 SEPARATION OF THE CHURCHES

general council was held in Constantinople, at the desire of
St. Ignatius and the Emperor, and presided over by the legates
of Pope Adrian. Photius, when called upon to answer for
himself, having nothing to say in his own defence, excused
his silence by the example of our Lord, who also was silent
when accused. The fathers were filled with indignation at
this blasphemous speech, and his guilt having been fully
proved, they cried unanimously: "Anathema on Photius, pro-
moted through court favor! Anathema to the tyrant Photius,
to the inventor of lies, to the new Judas! Anathema on all
his followers and protectors! Everlasting glory to the most
holy Roman Pope Nicholas! Long life to Adrian, the holy
Father in Rome!" At the next sitting of the council, a col-
lection of spurious and falsified writings, together with the
acts of the synod which Photius had held against Pope Nicho-
las, and which were filled with lies and invective and had
forged signatures appended to them, were publicly burned in
the church. But hardly had Ignatius died in the year 879,
when the crafty Photius, who knew well how to ingratiate him-
self with the Emperor, reascended the ill-fated chair and began
afresh his old courses. His rule did not last long. He was
again deposed and banished to a monastery, where he died
about the year 891. His death, however, in nowise healed
the wounds which he had inflicted on the Eastern Church.
His party survived him. He had rilled most of the Greek
sees with men of his own cast, and had illegally bestowed
benefices on great numbers of priests. These all harbored
a deep-seated dislike towards Rome, and only awaited a
favorable opportunity to renew the breach with her. Thus
that sectarian spirit which Photius had kindled continued
to smoulder on like a spark beneath the ashes, and spread
itself wider and wider, as well among the worst sort of the
clergy as among the fickle and discontented population.

It was after all this that the patriarchs of Constantinople
attempted to make themselves fully independent of the West.
The splendor of the imperial city of Byzantium was a con-
stant incitement to their desire for freedom, and they were
certain for the most part of being supported in their endeavors
by the emperors. As early as the time of Pope Gregory the

SEPARATION OF THE CHURCHES 203

Great, the patriarch John the Faster had taken on himself
the title of "(Ecumenical," or universal bishop, whilst Gregory,
in apostolic humility, chose that of "Servant of the servants
of God." It was in the middle of the eleventh century that
a complete separation was accomplished. The universally
recognized precedence of the See o Peter was intolerable to
the ambitious spirit of the patriarch Michael Cerularius. To
aid him in casting off the hated yoke, he circulated, like
Photius, a document in which the Western Church was loaded
with invective and all manner of accusations laid to her
charge. The celibacy of the secular clergy, the use of un-
leavened bread for the sacrifice, fasting on Saturdays, the
shaving of beards, the omission of the Alleluia in Lent, were
all brought forward as causes of offence. These complaints
were at once answered by Pope St. Leo IX, who tried, in a
most eloquent letter, to bring the deluded patriarch to reason.
He reminded him of the sanctity and inviolability of the
unity of Christ's Church, the folly and presumption of his
attempting to direct the successor of Peter, whom Christ had
Himself confirmed in the faith, and pointed out to him with
what ingratitude and contempt he was treating the Roman
Church, the mother and guardian of all the churches. Lastly,
he urged upon the patriarch to set aside all discord and pride,
and to allow divine mercy and peace to prevail instead of
strife. But the paternal words were spoken in vain, and the
legates also who were sent by the Pope to Constantinople
were powerless to move the obduracy of the patriarch. He
persistently refused all communication with them by speech
or writing. Having therefore formally laid their complaints
in the most distinct terms before the Emperor and Senate,
they proceeded to extremities. On the i6th of July, 1054,
they appeared in the church of St. Sophia at the beginning
of divine service, and declared solemnly that all their en-
deavors to re-establish peace and union had been defeated
by Cerularius. They then laid the bull of excommunication
on the high altar and left the church, shaking, as they did so,
the dust from off their feet, and exclaiming in the deepest
grief, "God sees it; He will judge." Thus was the unhappy
schism between the East and the West accomplished.

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND
BATTLE OF HASTINGS

A.D. 1066

SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY

Toward the end of the reign of Edward the Confessor the claims of
three rival competitors for the English crown were persistently urged.
These claimants were Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, whose claim
was based upon an alleged compact of King Hardicanute with King
Magnus, Harald's predecessor; Duke William of Normandy, and the
Saxon Harold, son of Godwin, Earl of Wessex. This Harold, born
about 1022, became Earl of East Anglia about 1045; was banished with
his father by Edward the Confessor in 1051, and restored with his father
in 1052 ; succeeded his father as Earl of Wessex in 1053 — relinquishing
the earldom of East Anglia — and from 1053 to 1066 was chief minister of
Edward.

Harold — probably in 1064 — being shipwrecked on the coast of Nor-
mandy, became a guest and virtual prisoner of William, Duke of Nor-
mandy, by whom the Saxon was forced to take an oath that he would
marry William's daughter and assist him in obtaining the crown of Eng-
land ; William then allowed Harold to return to his country. Upon the
death of Edward the Confessor — January 5, 1066 — an assembly of thanes
and prelates and leading citizens of London declared that Harold should
be their king. His accession as Harold II dates from the day after Ed-
ward's death. Harold justified himself on the ground that his oath to
William of Normandy was taken under constraint.

William published his protest against what he called the bad faith of
Harold, and proclaimed his purpose to assert his rights by the sword.
He also obtained the countenance of the Pope, whose authority Harold
refused to recognize. A banner, blessed by the Pope for the invasion of
England, was sent to William from the Holy See, and the clergy of the
Continent upheld his enterprise as being the Cause of God. Thus sup-
ported by the spiritual power, then wielding vast influence, William pro-
ceeded to gather " the most remarkable and formidable armament which
the western nations had witnessed." With this following he entered
upon an undertaking the speedy and complete success of which, in the
single and decisive battle of Hastings, was fruitful in historic results
such as are seldom so traceable to definite causes and events. " No one

204

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 205

who appreciates the influence of England and her empire upon the des-
tinies of the world will ever rank that victory as one of secondary im-
portance."

A LL the adventurous spirits of Christendom flocked to the
holy banner, under which Duke William, the most re-
nowned knight and sagest general of the age, promised to lead
them to glory and wealth in the fair domains of England. His
army was rilled with the chivalry of Continental Europe, all
eager to save their souls by fighting at the Pope's bidding,
eager to signalize their valor in so great an enterprise, and eager
also for the pay and the plunder which William liberally prom-
ised. But the Normans themselves were the pith and the
flower of the army, and William himself was the strongest, the
sagest, and the fiercest spirit of them all.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1066 all the seaports
of Normandy, Picardy, and Brittany rang with the busy sound
of preparation. On the opposite side of the Channel King
Harold collected the army and the fleet with which he hoped to
crush the southern invaders. But the unexpected attack of
King Harald Hardrada of Norway upon another part of Eng-
land disconcerted the skilful measures which the Saxon had
taken against the menacing armada of Duke William.

Harold's renegade brother, Earl Tostig, had excited the Norse
King to this enterprise, the importance of which has naturally
been eclipsed by the superior interest attached to the victorious
expedition of Duke William, but which was on a scale of gran-
deur which the Scandinavian ports had rarely, if ever, before
witnessed. Hardrada's fleet consisted of two hundred war-
ships and three hundred other vessels, and all the best warriors
of Norway were in his host. He sailed first to the Orkneys,
where many of the islanders joined him, and then to Yorkshire.
After a severe conflict near York he completely routed Earls
Edwin and Morcar, the governors of Northumbria. The city
of York opened its gates, and all the country, from the Tyne to
the Humber, submitted to him.

The tidings of the defeat of Edwin and Morcar compelled
Harold to leave his position on the southern coast and move
instantly against the Norwegians. By a remarkably rapid
march he reached Yorkshire in four days, and took the Norse

206 NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND

King and his confederates by surprise. Nevertheless, the battle
which ensued, and which was fought near Stamford Bridge,
was desperate, and was long doubtful. Unable to break the
ranks of the Norwegian phalanx by force, Harold at length
tempted them to quit their close order by a pretended flight.
Then the English columns burst in among them, and a carnage
ensued the extent of which may be judged of by the exhaustion
and inactivity of Norway for a quarter of a century afterward.
King Harald Hardrada and all the flower of his nobility per-
ished on the 25th of September, 1066, at Stamford Bridge, a battle
which was a Flodden to Norway.

Harold's victory was splendid; but he had bought it dearly
by the fall of many of his best officers and men, and still more
dearly by the opportunity which Duke William had gained of
effecting an unopposed landing on the Sussex coast. The
whole of William's shipping had assembled at the mouth of the
Dive, a little river between the Seme and the Orne, as early as
the middle of August. The army which he had collected
amounted to fifty thousand knights and ten thousand soldiers
of inferior degree. Many of the knights were mounted, but
many must have served on foot, as it is hardly possible to
believe that William could have found transports for the con-
veyance of fifty thousand war-horses across the Channel.

For a long time the winds were adverse, and the Duke em-
ployed the interval that passed before he could set sail in com-
pleting the organization in and improving the discipline of his
army, which he seems to have brought into the same state of
perfection as was seven centuries and a half afterward the boast
of another army assembled on the same coast, and which Na-
poleon designed for a similar descent upon England.

It was not till the approach of the equinox that the wind
veered from the northeast to the west, and gave the Normans
an opportunity of quitting the weary shores of the Dive. They
eagerly embarked and set sail, but the wind soon freshened to
a gale, and drove them along the French coast to St. Valery,
where the greater part of them found shelter; but many of their
vessels were wrecked, and the whole coast of Normandy was
strewn with the bodies of the drowned.

William's army began to grow discouraged and averse to

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 207

the enterprise, which the very elements thus seemed to fight
against; though, in reality, the northeast wind, which had
cooped them so long at the mouth of the Dive, and the western
gale, which had forced them into St. Valery, were the best pos-
sible friends to the invaders. They prevented the Normans from
crossing the Channel until the Saxon King and his army of de-
fence had been called away from the Sussex coast to encounter
Harald Hardrada in Yorkshire; and also until a formidable
English fleet, which by King Harold's orders had been cruising
in the Channel to intercept the Normans, had been obliged to
disperse temporarily for the purpose of refitting and taking in
fresh stores of provisions.

Duke William used every expedient to reanimate the droop-
ing spirits of his men at St. Valery; and at last he caused the
body of the patron saint of the place to be exhumed and carried
in solemn procession, while the whole assemblage of soldiers,
mariners, and appurtenant priests implored the saint's inter-
cession for a change of wind. That very night the wind veered,
and enabled the mediaeval Agamemnon to quit his Aulis.

With full sails, and a following southern breeze, the Norman
armada left the French shores and steered for England. The
invaders crossed an undefended sea, and found an undefended
coast. It was in Pevensey Bay, in Sussex, at Bulverhithe,
between the castle of Pevensey and Hastings, that the last con-
querors of this island landed on the 2Qth of September, 1066.

Harold was at York, rejoicing over his recent victory, which
had delivered England from her ancient Scandinavian foes,
and resettling the government of the counties which Harald
Hardrada had overrun, when the tidings reached him that Duke
William of Normandy and his host had landed on the Sussex
shore. Harold instantly hurried southward to meet this long-
expected enemy. The severe loss which his army had sus-
tained in the battle with the Norwegians must have made it
impossible for many of his veteran troops to accompany him in
his forced march to London, and thence to Sussex. He halted
at the capital only six days, and during that time gave orders for
collecting forces from the southern and midland counties, and
also directed his fleet to reassemble off the Sussex coast. Har-
old was well received in London, and his summons to arms was

208 NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND

promptly obeyed by citizen, by thane, by socman, and by ceorl,
for he had shown himself, during his brief reign, a just and wise
king, affable to all men, active for the good of his country, and,
in the words of the old historian, sparing himself from no
fatigue by land or by sea. He might have gathered a much
more numerous army than that of William; but his recent
victory had made him overconfident, and he was irritated by
the reports of the country being ravaged by the invaders. As
soon, therefore, as he had collected a small army in London he
marched off toward the coast, pressing forward as rapidly as his
men could traverse Surrey and Sussex, in the hope of taking the
Normans unawares, as he had recently, by a similar forced march,
succeeded in surprising the Norwegians. But he had now to
deal with a foe equally brave with Harald Hardrada and far
more skilful and wary.

The old Norman chroniclers describe the preparations of
William on his landing with a graphic vigor, which would be
wholly lost by transfusing their racy Norman couplets and terse
Latin prose into the current style of modern history. It is best
to follow them closely, though at the expense of much quaint-
ness and occasional uncouthness of expression. They tell us
how Duke William's own ship was the first of the Norman fleet.
It was called the Mora, and was the gift of his duchess Matilda.
On the head of the ship, in the front, which mariners call the
prow, there was a brazen child bearing an arrow with a bended
bow. His face was turned toward England, and thither he
looked, as though he was about to shoot. The breeze became
soft and sweet, and the sea was smooth for their landing. The
ships ran on dry land, and each ranged by the other's side.
There you might see the good sailors, the sergeants, and squires
sally forth and unload the ships; cast the anchors, haul the
ropes, bear out shields and saddles, and land the war-horses
and the palfreys. The archers came forth and touched land
the first, each with his bow strung, and with his quiver full of
arrows slung at his side. All were shaven and shorn; and all
clad in short garments, ready to attack, to shoot, to wheel about
and skirmish. All stood well equipped and of good courage
for the fight; and they scoured the whole shore, but found not
an armed man there. After the archers had thus gone forth,

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 209

the knights landed all armed, with their hauberks on, their
shields slung at their necks, and their helmets laced. They
formed together on the shore, each armed and mounted on his
war-horse; all had their swords girded on, and rode forward
into the country with their lances raised. Then the carpenters
landed, who had great axes in their hands, and planes and
adzes hung at their sides. They took counsel together, and
sought for a good spot to place a castle on. They had brought
with them in the fleet three wooden castles from Normandy in
pieces, all ready for framing together, and they took the materials
of one of these out of the ships, all shaped and pierced to receive
the pins which they had brought cut and ready in large bar-
rels; and before evening had set in they had finished a good
fort on the English ground, and there they placed their stores.
All then ate and drank enough, and were right glad that they
were ashore.

When Duke William himself landed, as he stepped on the
shore he slipped and fell forward upon his two hands. Forth-
with all raised a loud cry of distress. "An evil sign," said they,
"is here." But he cried out lustily: "See, my lords, by the
splendor of God,1 1 have taken possession of England with both
my hands. It is now mine, and what is mine is yours."

The next day they marched along the sea-shore to Hastings.
Near that place the Duke fortified a camp, and set up the two
other wooden castles. The foragers, and those who looked
out for booty, seized all the clothing and provisions they could
find, lest what had been brought by the ships should fail them.
And the English were to be seen fleeing before them, driving
off their cattle, and quitting their houses. Many took shelter in
burying-places, and even there they were in grievous alarm.

Besides the marauders from the Norman camp, strong
bodies of cavalry were detached by William into the country,
and these, when Harold and his army made their rapid march
from London southward, fell back in good order upon the
main body of the Normans, and reported that the Saxon King
was rushing on like a madman. But Harold, when he found
that his hopes of surprising his adversary were vain, changed
his tactics, and halted about seven miles from the Norman lines.
1 William's customary oath.

E. , VOL. V.— 14.

210 NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND

He sent some spies, who spoke the French language, to ex-
amine the number and preparations of the enemy, who, on their
return, related with astonishment that there were more priests
in William's camp than there were fighting men in the English
army. They had mistaken for priests all the Norman soldiers
who had short hair and shaven chins, for the English laymen
were then accustomed to wear long hair and mustaches. Har-
old, who knew the Norman usages, smiled at their words, and
said, "Those whom you have seen in such numbers are not
priests, but stout soldiers, as they will soon make us feel."

Harold's army was far inferior in number to that of the
Normans, and some of his captains advised him to retreat
upon London and lay waste the country, so as to starve down
the strength of the invaders. The policy thus recommended
was unquestionably the wisest, for the Saxon fleet had now
reassembled, and intercepted all William's communications
with Normandy; and as soon as his stores of provisions were
exhausted, he must have moved forward upon London, where
Harold, at the head of the full military strength of the kingdom,
could have defied his assault, and probably might have witnessed
his rival's destruction by famine and disease, without having
to strike a single blow. But Harold's bold blood was up, and
his kindly heart could not endure to inflict on the South Saxon
subjects even the temporary misery of wasting the country.
"He would not burn houses and villages, neither would he
take away the substance, of his people."

Harold's brothers, Gurth and Leofwine, were with him in
the camp, and Gurth endeavored to persuade him to absent
himself from the battle. The incident shows how well devised
had been William's scheme of binding Harold by the oath on
the holy relics.

"My brother," said the young Saxon prince, "thou canst not
deny that either by force or free will thou hast made Duke Wil-
liam an oath on the bodies of saints. Why then risk thyself in
the battle with a perjury upon thee? To us, who have sworn
nothing, this is a holy and a just war, for we are fighting for our
country. Leave us then alone to fight this battle, and he who
has the right will win."

Harold replied that he would not look on while others risked

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 211

their lives for him. Men would hold him a coward, and blame
him for sending his best friends where he dared not go himself.
He resolved, therefore, to fight, and to fight in person; but he
was still too good a general to be the assailant in the action;
and he posted his army with great skill along a ridge of rising
ground which opened southward, and was covered on the back
by an extensive wood. He strengthened his position by a pal-
isade of stakes and osier hurdles, and there he said he would
defend himself against whoever should seek him.

The ruins of Battle Abbey at this hour attest the place where
Harold's army was posted; and the high altar of the abbey
stood on the very spot where Harold's own standard was planted
during the fight, and where the carnage was the thickest. Im-
mediately after his victory William vowed to build an abbey
on the site; and a fair and stately pile soon rose there, where for
many ages the monks prayed and said masses for the souls of
those who were slain in the battle, whence the abbey took its
name. Before that time the place was called Senlac. Little
of the ancient edifice now remains; but it is easy to trace in the
park and the neighborhood the scenes of the chief incidents in
the action; and it is impossible to deny the generalship shown
by Harold in stationing his men, especially when we bear in
mind that he was deficient in cavalry, the arm in which his
adversary's main strength consisted.

William's only chance of safety lay in bringing on a general
engagement; and he joyfully advanced his army from their
camp on the hill over Hastings, nearer to the Saxon position.
But he neglected no means of weakening his opponent, and
renewed his summonses and demands on Harold with an os-
tentatious air of sanctity and moderation.

"A monk, named Hugues Maigrot, came in William's
name to call upon the Saxon King to do one of three things —
either to resign his royalty in favor of William, or to refer it to
the arbitration of the pope to decide which of the two ought
to be king, or let it be determined by the issue of a single com-
bat. Harold abruptly replied, 'I will not resign my title, I will
not refer it to the pope, nor will I accept the single combat.'
He was far from being deficient in bravery; but he was no more
at liberty to stake the crown which he had received from a whole

2i2 NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND

people in the chance of a duel than to deposit it in the hands of
an Italian priest. William, not at all ruffled by the Saxon's
refusal, but steadily pursuing the course of his calculated
measures, sent the Norman monk again, after giving him these
instructions: ' Go and tell Harold that if he will keep his former
compact with me, I will leave to him all the country which is
beyond the Humber, and will give his brother Gurth all the
lands which Godwin held. If he still persist in refusing my
offers, then thou shalt tell him, before all his people, that he is
a perjurer and a liar; that he and all who shall support him are
excommunicated by the mouth of the Pope, and that the bull to
that effect is in my hands.'

"Hugues Maigrot delivered this message in a solemn tone;
and the Norman chronicle says that at the word excommunica-
tion the English chiefs looked at one another as if some great
danger were impending. One of them then spoke as follows:
'We must fight, whatever may be the danger to us; for what
we have to consider is not whether we shall accept and receive
a new lord, as if our king were dead ; the case is quite otherwise.
The Norman has given our lands to his captains, to his knights,
to all his people, the greater part of whom have already done
homage to him for them : they will all look for their gift if their
duke become our king; and he himself is bound to deliver up to
them our goods, our wives, and our daughters: all is promised
to them beforehand. They come, not only to ruin us, but to
ruin our descendants also, and to take from us the country of
our ancestors. And what shall we do — whither shall we go,
when we have no longer a country?' The English promised,
by a unanimous oath, to make neither peace nor truce nor
treaty with the invader, but to die or drive away the Nor-
mans."

The 1 3th of October was occupied in these negotiations,
and at night the Duke announced to his men that the next day
would be the day of battle. That night is said to have been
passed by the two armies in very different manners. The
Saxon soldiers spent it in joviality, singing their national songs,
and draining huge horns of ale and wine round their camp-
fires. The Normans, when they had looked to their arms and
horses, confessed themselves to the priests, with whom their

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 213

camp was thronged, and received the sacrament by thousands
at a time.

On Saturday, the i4th of October, was fought the great
battle.

It is not difficult to compose a narrative of its principal
incidents from the historical information which we possess,
especially if aided by an examination of the ground. But it
is far better to adopt the spirit-stirring words of the old chroni-
clers, who wrote while the recollections of the battle were yet
fresh, and while the feelings and prejudices of the combatants
yet glowed in the bosoms of living men.

Robert Wace, the Norman poet, who presented his Roman
de Rou to Henry II, is the most picturesque and animated of
the old writers, and from him we can obtain a more vivid and
full description of the conflict than even the most brilliant
romance-writer of the present time can supply. We have also
an antique memorial of the battle more to be relied on than
either chronicler or poet (and which confirms Wace's narrative
remarkably) in the celebrated Bayeux tapestry, which repre-
sents the principal scenes of Duke William's expedition and of
the circumstances connected with it, in minute though occa-
sionally grotesque details, and which was undoubtedly the
production of the same age in which the battle took place,
whether we admit or reject the legend that Queen Matilda and
the ladies of her court wrought it with their own hands in honor
of the royal Conqueror.

Let us therefore suffer the old Norman chronicler to trans-
port our imaginations to the fair Sussex scenery northwest of
Hastings, as it appeared on that October morning. The Nor-
man host is pouring forth from its tents, and each troop and
each company is forming fast under the banner of its leader.
The masses have been sung, which were finished betimes in
the morning; the barons have all assembled round Duke Wil-
liam; and the Duke has ordered that the army shall be formed
in three divisions, so as to make the attack upon the Saxon
position in three places.

The Duke stood on a hill where he could best see his men;
the barons surrounded him, and he spake to them proudly.
He told them how he trusted them, and how all that he gained

2i4 NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND

should be theirs, and how sure he felt of conquest, for in all
the world there was not so brave an army or such good men
and true as were then forming around him. Then they cheered
him in turn, and cried out: "'You will not see one coward;
none here will fear to die for love of you, if need be.' And
he answered them: 'I thank you well. For God's sake, spare
not; strike hard at the beginning; stay not to take spoil; all
the booty shall be in common, and there will be plenty for
everyone. There will be no safety in asking quarter or in
flight; the English will never love or spare a Norman. Felons
they were, and felons they are; false they were, and false they
will be. Show no weakness toward them, for they will have
no pity on you; neither the coward for running well, nor the
bold man for smiting well, will be the better liked by the Eng-
lish, nor will any be the more spared on either account. You
may fly to the sea, but you can fly no farther; you will find
neither ships nor bridge there; there will be no sailors to receive
you, and the English will overtake you there and slay you in
your shame. More of you will die in flight than in battle.
Then, as flight will not secure you, fight and you will conquer.
I have no doubt of the victory; we are come for glory; the
victory is in our hands, and we may make sure of obtaining it
if we so please.'

"As the Duke was speaking thus and would yet have spoken
more, William Fitzosbern rode up with his horse all coated
with iron. 'Sire,' said he, 'we tarry here too long; let us all
arm ourselves. Allans! allons!'

"Then all went to their tents and armed themselves as
they best might; and the Duke was very busy, giving everyone
his orders; and he was courteous to all the vassals, giving away
many arms and horses to them. When he prepared to arm
himself, he called first for his hauberk, and a man brought it
on his arm and placed it before him, but in putting his head
in, to get it on, he unawares turned it the wrong way, with the
back part in front. He soon changed it ; but when he saw that
those who stood by were sorely alarmed, he said : ' I have seen
many a man who if such a thing had happened to him would not
have borne arms or entered the field the same day; but I never
believed in omens, and I never will. I trust in God, for he

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 215

does in all things his pleasure, and ordains what is to come to
pass according to his will. I have never liked fortune-tellers,
nor believed in diviners, but I commend myself to Our Lady.
Let not this mischance give you trouble. The hauberk which
was turned wrong, and then set right by me, signifies that a
change will arise out of the matter which we are now stirring.
You shall see the name of duke changed into king. Yea, a
king shall I be, who hitherto have been but duke.'

"Then he crossed himself, and straightway took his hau-
berk, stooped his head and put it on aright, and laced his helmet,
and girt on his sword, which a varlet brought him. Then the
Duke called for his good horse — a better could not be found.
It had been sent him by a king of Spain, out of very great friend-
ship. Neither arms nor the press of fighting men did it fear
if its lord spurred it on. Walter Giffard brought it. The
Duke stretched out his hand, took the reins, put foot in stirrup,
and mounted, and the good horse pawed, pranced, reared
himself up, and curvetted.

"The Viscount of Toarz saw how the Duke bore himself in
arms and said to his people that were around him: 'Never have
I seen a man so fairly armed, nor one who rode so gallantly, or
bore his arms or became his hauberk so well; neither any
one who bore his lance so gracefully or sat his horse and man-
aged him so nobly. There is no such knight under heaven!
a fair count he is, and fair king he will be. Let him fight
and he shall overcome; shame be to the man who shall fail
him!'

"Then the Duke called for the standard which the Pope
had sent him, and, he who bore it having unfolded it, the Duke
took it and called to Raoul de Conches. 'Bear my standard,'
said he, 'for I would not but do you right; by right and by
ancestry your line are standard-bearers of Normandy, and
very good knights have they all been.' But Raoul said that
he would serve the Duke that day in other guise, and would
fight the English with his hand as long as life should last.

"Then the Duke bade Walter Giffard bear the standard.
But he was old and white-headed, and bade the Duke give the
standard to some younger and stronger man to carry. Then
the Duke said fiercely, ' By the splendor of God, my lords, I

2i6 NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND

think you mean to betray and fail me in this great need.' 'Sire,1
said Giffart, *not so! we have done no treason, nor do I refuse
from any felony toward you; but I have to lead a great chivalry,
both hired men and the men of my fief. Never had I such
good means of serving you as I now have; and, if God please,
I will serve you ; if need be I will die for you, and will give my
own heart for yours.'

"'By my faith,' quoth the Duke, 'I always loved thee, and
now I love thee more; if I survive this day, thou shalt be the
better for it all thy days.' Then he called out a knight, whom
he had heard much praised, Tosteins Fitz-Rou le Blanc by
name, whose abode was at Bec-en-Caux. To him he de-
livered the standard; and Tosteins took it right cheerfully,
and bowed low to him in thanks, and bore it gallantly and
with good heart. His kindred still have quittance of all ser-
vice for their inheritance on this account, and their heirs are
entitled so to hold their inheritance forever.

"William sat on his war-horse, and called out Rogier,
whom they call De Montgomeri. 'I rely much on you,' said
he; 'lead your men thitherward and attack them from that
side. William, the son of Osbern the seneschal, a right good
vassal, shall go with you and help in the attack, and you shall
have the men of Boilogne and Poix and all my soldiers. Alain
Fergert and Ameri shall attack on the other side; they shall
lead the Poitevins and the Bretons and all the barons of Maine;
and I, with my own great men, my friends and kindred, will
fight in the middle throng, where the battle shall be the hot-
test.'

"The barons and knights and men-at-arms were all now
armed; the foot-soldiers were well equipped, each bearing
bow and sword; on their heads were caps, and to their feet
were bound buskins. Some had good hides which they had
bound round their bodies; and many were clad in frocks, and
had quivers and bows hung to their girdles. The knights
had hauberks and swords, boots of steel, and shining helmets;
shields at their necks, and in their hands lances. And all had
their cognizances, so that each might know his fellow, and
Norman might not strike Norman, nor Frenchman kill his
countryman by mistake. Those on foot led the way, with

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 217

serried ranks, bearing their bows. The knights rode next, sup-
porting the archers from behind. Thus both horse and foot
kept their course and order of march as they began, in close
ranks at a gentle pace, that the one might not pass or separate
from the other. All went firmly and compactly, bearing them-
selves gallantly.

"Harold had summoned his men, earls, barons, and va-
vasors, from the castles and the cities, from the ports, the
villages and boroughs. The peasants were also called to-
gether from the villages, bearing such arms as they found;
clubs and great picks, iron forks and stakes. The English
had enclosed the place where Harold was with his friends and
the barons of the country whom he had summoned and called
together.

"Those of London had come at once, and those of Kent,
of Hertfort, and of Essesse; those of Surde and Susesse, of
St. Edmund and Sufoc; of Norwis and Norfoc; of Can-
torbierre and Stanfort, Bedefort and Hundetone. The men
of Northanton also came; and those of Eurowic and Bokinke-
ham, of Bed and Notinkeham, Lindesie and Nichole. There
came also from the west all who heard the summons; and
very many were to be seen coming from Salebiere and Dorset,
from Bat and from Sumerset. Many came, too, from about
Glocestre, and many from Wirecestre, from Wincestre, Honte-
sire and Brichesire; and many more from other counties that
we have not named, and cannot, indeed, recount. All who
could bear arms, and had learned the news of the Duke's arrival,
came to defend the land. But none came from beyond Hum-
bre, for they had other business upon their hands, the Danes
and Tosti having much damaged and weakened them.

"Harold knew that the Normans would come and attack
him hand to hand, so he had early enclosed the field in which
he had placed his men. He made them arm early and range
themselves for the battle, he himself having put on arms and
equipments that became such a lord. The Duke, he said, ought
to seek him, as he wanted to conquer England; and it became
him to abide the attack who had to defend the land. He
commanded the people, and counselled his barons to keep
themselves all together and defend themselves in a body,

218 NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND

for if they once separated, they would with difficulty recover
themselves. 'The Normans,' said he, 'are good vassals,
valiant on foot and on horseback; good knights are they on
horseback and well used to battle; all is lost if they once pene-
trate our ranks. They have brought long lances and swords,
but you have pointed lances and keen-edged bills; and I do
not expect that their arms can stand against yours. Cleave
whenever you can; it will be ill done if you spare aught.'

"The English had built up a fence before them with their
shields and with ash and other wood, and had well joined
and wattled in the whole work, so as not to leave even a crevice ;
and thus they had a barricade in their front through which any
Norman who would attack them must first pass. Being cov-
ered in this way by their shields and barricades, their aim was
to defend themselves; and if they had remained steady for
that purpose, they would not have been conquered that day;
for every Norman who made his way in lost his life in dis-
honor, either by hatchet or bill, by club or other weapon.

"They wore short and close hauberks, and helmets that
hung over their garments. King Harold issued orders, and
made proclamation round, that all should be ranged with their
faces toward the enemy, and that no one should move from
where he was, so that whoever came might find them ready;
and that whatever anyone, be he Norman or other, should do,
each should do his best to defend his own place. Then he
ordered the men of Kent to go where the Normans were likely
to make the attack; for they say that the men of Kent are en-
titled to strike first; and that whenever the king goes to battle,
the first blow belongs to them. The right of the men of Lon-
don is to guard the king's body, to place themselves around him,
and to guard his standard; and they were accordingly placed
by the standard to watch and defend it.

"When Harold had made all ready, and given his orders,
he came into the midst of the English and dismounted by
the side of the standard ; Leofwine and Gurth, his brothers,
were with him; and around him he had barons enough, as
he stood by his standard, which was, in truth, a noble one,
sparkling with gold and precious stones. After the victory
William sent it to the Pope, to prove and commemorate his

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 219

great conquest and glory. The English stood in close ranks,
ready and eager for the fight; and they, moreover, made a
fosse, which went across the field, guarding one side of their
army.

"Meanwhile the Normans appeared advancing over the
ridge of a rising ground, and the first division of their troops
moved onward along the hill and across a valley. And pres-
ently another division, still larger, came in sight, close fol-
lowing upon the first, and they were led toward another part of
the field, forming together as the first body had done. And
while Harold saw and examined them, and was pointing them
out to Gurth, a fresh company came in sight, covering all the
plain; and in the midst of them was raised the standard that
came from Rome.

"Near it was the Duke, and the best men and greatest
strength of the army were there. The good knights, the good
vassals, and brave warriors were there; and there were gathered
together the gentle barons, the good archers, and the men-at-
arms, whose duty it was to guard the Duke, and range them-
selves around him. The youths and common herd of the
camp, whose business was not to join in the battle, but to
take care of the harness and stores, moved off toward a rising
ground. The priests and the clerks also ascended a hill, there
to offer up prayers to God, and watch the event of the battle.

"The English stood firm on foot in close ranks, and carried
themselves right boldly. Each man had his hauberk on,
with his sword girt, and his shield at his neck. Great hatchets
were also slung at their necks, with which they expected to
strike heavy blows.

"The Normans brought on the three divisions of their
army to attack at different places. They set out in three com-
panies, and in three companies did they fight. The first and
second had come up, and then advanced the third, which was
the greatest; with that came the Duke with his own men, and
all moved boldly forward.

"As soon as the two armies were in full view of each other,
great noise and tumult arose. You might hear the sound of
many trumpets, of bugles, and of horns; and then you might
see men ranging themselves in line, lifting their shields, rais-

220 NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND

ing their lances, bending their bows, handling their arrows,
ready for assault and defence.

"The English stood steady to their post, the Normans
still moved on; and when they drew near, the English were
to be seen stirring to and fro; were going and coming; troops
ranging themselves in order; some with their color rising,
others turning pale; some making ready their arms, others
raising their shields; the brave man rousing himself to fight,
the coward trembling at the approach of danger.

"Then Taillefer, who sang right well, rode, mounted on
a swift horse, before the Duke, singing of Charlemagne and
of Roland, of Oliver, and the peers who died in Roncesvalles.
And when they drew nigh to the English,

" ' A boon, sire!' cried Taillefer; 'I have long served you,
and you owe me for all such service. To-day, so please you,
you shall repay it. I ask as my guerdon, and beseech you for
it earnestly, that you will allow me to strike the first blow in
the battle!' And the Duke answered, 'I grant it/

"Then Taillefer put his horse to a gallop, charging before
all the rest, and struck an Englishman dead, driving his lance
below the breast into his body, and stretching him upon the
ground. Then he drew his sword, and struck another, cry-
ing out, ' Come on, come on! What do ye, sirs? lay on, lay on!'
At the second blow he struck the English pushed forward,
and surrounded, and slew him. Forthwith arose the noise and
cry of war, and on either side the people put themselves in
motion.

"The Normans moved on to the assault, and the Eng-
lish defended themselves well. Some were striking, others
urging onward; all were bold and cast aside fear. And now,
behold, that battle was gathered whereof the fame is yet
mighty.

"Loud and far resounded the bray of the horns and the
shocks of the lances, the mighty strokes of maces and the quick
clashing of swords. One while the Englishmen rushed on,
another while they fell back; one while the men from over
sea charged onward, and again at other times retreated. The
Normans shouted, ' Dex Aie,' the English people, ' Out.' Then
came the cunning manoeuvres, the rude shocks and strokes of

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 221

the lance and blows of the swords, among the sergeants and
soldiers, both English and Norman.

"When the English fall, the Normans shout. Each side
taunts and defies the other, yet neither knoweth what the
other saith; and the Normans say the English bark, because
they understand not their speech.

"Some wax strong, others weak: the brave exult, but the
cowards tremble, as men who are sore dismayed. The Nor-
mans press on the assault, and the English defend their post
well; they pierce the hauberks and cleave the shields, receive
and return mighty blows. Again, some press forward, others
yield; and thus, in various ways, the struggle proceeds. In
the plain was a fosse, which the Normans had now behind
them, having passed it in the fight without regarding it. But
the English charged and drove the Normans before them till
they made them fall back upon this fosse, overthrowing into it
horses and men. Many were to be seen falling therein, rolling
one over the others, with their faces to the earth, and unable
to rise. Many of the English also, whom the Normans drew
down along with them, died there. At no time during the day's
battle did so many Normans die as perished in that fosse. So
those said who saw the dead.

"The varlets who were set to guard the harness began to
abandon it as they saw the loss of the Frenchmen when thrown
back upon the fosse without power to recover themselves. Being
greatly alarmed at seeing the difficulty in restoring order, they
began to quit the harness, and sought around, not knowing
where to find shelter. Then Duke William's brother, Odo, the
good priest, the Bishop of Bayeux, galloped up and said to
them: 'Stand fast! stand fast! be quiet and move not! fear
nothing; for, if God please, we shall conquer yet.' So they
took courage and rested where they were; and Odo returned
galloping back to where the battle was most fierce, and was of
great service on that day. He had put a hauberk on over a white
aube, wide in the body, with the sleeve tight, and sat on a white
horse, so that all might recognize him. In his hand he held a
mace, and wherever he saw most need he held up and stationed
the knights, and often urged them on to assault and strike the
enemy.

222 NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND

" From nine o'clock in the morning, when the combat began,
till three o'clock came, the battle was up and down, this way
and that, and no one knew who would conquer and win the
land. Both sides stood so firm and fought so well that no one
could guess which would prevail. The Norman archers with
their bows shot thickly upon the English; but they covered
themselves with their shields, so that the arrows could not reach
their bodies nor do any mischief, how true soever was their
aim or however well they shot. Then the Normans determined
to shoot their arrows upward into the air, so that they might fall
on their enemies' heads and strike their faces. The archers
adopted this scheme and shot up into the air toward the Eng-
lish; and the arrows, in falling, struck their heads and faces
and put out the eyes of many; and all feared to open their eyes
or leave their faces unguarded.

"The arrows now flew thicker than rain before the wind;
fast sped the shafts that the English call 'wibetes.' Then it
was that an arrow, that had been thus shot upward, struck
Harold above his right eye, and put it out. In his agony he drew
the arrow and threw it away, breaking it with his hands; and
the pain to his head was so great that he leaned upon his shield.
So the English were wont to say, and still say to the French,
that the arrow was well shot which was so sent up against their
King, and that the archer won them great glory who thus put
out Harold's eye.

"The Normans saw that the English defended themselves
well, and were so strong in their position that they could do
little against them. So they consulted together privily, and
arranged to draw off, and pretend to flee, till the English should
pursue and scatter themselves over the field; for they saw that
if they could once get their enemies to break their ranks, they
might be attacked and discomfited much more easily. As they
had said, so they did. The Normans by little and little fled,
the English following them. As the one fell back, the other
pressed after; and when the Frenchmen retreated, the English
thought and cried out that the men of France fled and would
never return.

"Thus they were deceived by the pretended flight, and great
mischief thereby befell them; for if they had not moved from

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 223

their position, it is not likely that they would have been con-
quered at all; but, like fools, they broke their lines and pur-
sued.

"The Normans were to be seen following up their stratagem,
retreating slowly so as to draw the English farther on. As they
stih1 flee, the English pursue; they push out then- knees and
stretch forth their hatchets, following the Normans as they go,
rejoicing in the success of their scheme, and scattering them-
selves over the plain. And the English meantime jeered and
insulted their foes with words. ' Cowards,' they cried, ' you came
hither hi an evil hour, wanting our lands and seeking to seize
our property; fools that ye were to come! Normandy is too
far off, and you will not easily reach it. It is of little use to run
back; unless you can cross the sea at a leap or can drink it
dry, your sons and daughters are lost to you.'

"The Normans bore it all; but, in fact, they knew not what
the English said : their language seemed like the baying of dogs,
which they could not understand. At length they stopped and
turned round, determined to recover their ranks; and the
barons might be heard crying, ' Dex Aie! ' for a halt. Then the
Normans resumed their former position, turning their faces tow-
ard the enemy; and their men were to be seen facing round
and rushing onward to a fresh mSlte, the one party assaulting
the other; this man striking, another pressing onward. One
hits, another misses; one flies, another pursues; one is aiming
a stroke, while another discharges his blow. Norman strives
with Englishman again, and amis his blows afresh. One flies,
another pursues swiftly: the combatants are many, the plain
wide, the battle and the melfe fierce. On every hand they fight
hard, the blows are heavy, and the struggle becomes fierce.

"The Normans were playing their part well, when an Eng-
lish knight came rushing up, having in his company a hundred
men furnished with various arms. He wielded a northern
hatchet with the blade a full foot long, and was well armed
after his manner, being tall, bold, and of noble carriage. In
the front of the battle, where the Normans thronged most, he
came bounding on swifter than the stag, many Normans falling
before him and his company.

"He rushed straight upon a Norman who was armed and

224 NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND

riding on a war-horse, and tried with his hatchet of steel to
cleave his helmet; but the blow miscarried, and the sharp
blade glanced down before the saddle-bow, driving through
the horse's neck down to the ground, so that both horse and
master fell together to the earth. I know not whether the Eng-
lishman struck another blow; but the Normans who saw the
stroke were astonished and about to abandon the assault, when
Roger de Montgomeri came galloping up, with his lance set,
and, heeding not the long-handled axe which the Englishman
wielded aloft, struck him down and left him stretched on the
ground. Then Roger cried out, 'Frenchmen, strike! the day
is ours!' And again a fierce meUe was to be seen, with many a
blow of lance and sword; the English still defending themselves,
killing the horses and cleaving the shields.

"There was a French soldier of noble mien who sat his
horse gallantly. He spied two Englishmen who were also carry-
ing themselves boldly. They were both men of great worth
and had become companions in arms and fought together, the
one protecting the other. They bore two long and broad bills
and did great mischief to the Normans, killing both horses and
men.

"The French soldier looked at them and their bills and
was sore alarmed, for he was afraid of losing his good horse,
the best that he had, and would willingly have turned to some
other quarter if it would not have looked like cowardice. He
soon, however, recovered his courage, and, spurring his horse,
gave him the bridle and galloped swiftly forward. Fearing the
two bills, he raised his shield, and struck one of the Englishmen
with his lance on the breast, so that the iron passed out at his
back. At the moment that he fell the lance broke, and the
Frenchman seized the mace that hung at his right side, and
struck the other Englishman a blow that completely fractured
his skull.

" On the other side was an Englishman who much annoyed
the French, continually assaulting them with a keen-edged
hatchet. He had a helmet made of wood, which he had fastened
down to his coat and laced round his neck, so that no blows
could reach his head. The ravage he was making was seen by
a gallant Norman knight, who rode a horse that neither fire

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 225

nor water could stop in its career when its master urged it on.
The knight spurred, and his horse carried him on well till he
charged the Englishman, striking him over the helmet so that
it fell down over his eyes; and as he stretched out his hand to
raise it and uncover his face, the Norman cut off his right hand,
so that his hatchet fell to the ground. Another Norman sprang
forward and eagerly seized the prize with both his hands, but he
kept it little space and paid dearly for it, for as he stooped to
p?ck up the hatchet an Englishman with his long-handled axe
struck him over the back, breaking all his bones, so that his
entrails and lungs gushed forth. The knight of the good horse
meantime returned without injury; but on his way he met
another Englishman and bore him down under his horse,
wounding him grievously and trampling him altogether under
foot.

"And now might be heard the loud clang and cry of battle
and the clashing of lances. The English stood firm in their
barricades, and shivered the lances, beating them into pieces
with their bills and maces. The Normans drew their swords
and hewed down the barricades, and the English, in great
trouble, fell back upon their standard, where were collected the
maimed and wounded.

"There were many knights of Chauz who jousted and made
attacks. The English knew not how to joust, or bear arms on
horseback, but fought with hatchets and bills. A man, when
he wanted to strike with one of their hatchets, was obliged to
hold it with both his hands, and could not at the same time, as
it seems to me, both cover himself and strike with any freedom.

"The English fell back toward the standard, which was
upon a rising ground, and the Normans followed them across
the valley, attacking them on foot and horseback. Then Hue
de Mortemer, with the Sires D'Auviler, D'Onebac, and St,
Cler, rode up and charged, overthrowing many.

"Robert Fitz Erneis fixed his lance, took his shield, and,
galloping toward the standard, with his keen-edged sword
struck an Englishman who was in front, killed him, and then
drawing back his sword, attacked many others, and pushed
straight for the standard, trying to beat it down; but the Eng-
lish surrounded it and killed him with their bills. He was found
E,, VOL. v.— 15.

226 NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND

on the spot, when they afterward sought for him, dead and
lying at the standard's foot.

"Duke William pressed close upon the English with his
lance, striving hard to reach the standard with the great troop
he led, and seeking earnestly for Harold, on whose account the
whole war was. The Normans follow their lord, and press
around him; they ply their blows upon the English, and these
defend themselves stoutly, striving hard with their enemies,
returning blow for blow.

"One of them was a man of great strength, a wrestler, who
did great mischief to the Normans with his hatchet; all feared
him, for he struck down a great many Normans. The Duke
spurred on his horse, and aimed a blow at him, but he stooped,
and so escaped the stroke; then jumping on one side, he lifted
his hatchet aloft, and as the Duke bent to avoid the blow, the
Englishman boldly struck him on the head and beat in his
helmet, though without doing much injury. He was very near
falling, however; but, bearing on his stirrups, he recovered
himself immediately; and when he thought to have revenged
himself upon the churl by killing him, he had escaped, dreading
the Duke's blow. He ran back in among the English, but he
was not safe even there; for the Normans, seeing him, pursued
and caught him, and having pierced him through and through
with their lances, left him dead on the ground.

"Where the throng of the battle was greatest, the men of
Kent and Essex fought wondrously well, and made the Nor-
mans again retreat, but without doing them much injury. And
when the Duke saw his men fall back and the English triumph-
ing over them, his spirit rose high, and he seized his shield and
his lance, which a vassal handed to him, and took his post by
his standard.

"Then those who kept close guard by him and rode where
he rode, being about a thousand armed men, came and rushed
with closed ranks upon the English, and, with the weight of
their good horses, and the blows the knights gave, broke the
press of the enemy, and scattered the crowd before them, the
good Duke leading them on in front. Many pursued and many
fled; many were the Englishmen who fell around, and were
trampled under the horses, crawling upon the earth, and not

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 227

able to rise. Many of the richest and noblest men fell in the
rout, but still the English rallied in places, smote down those
whom they reached, and maintained the combat the best they
could, beating down the men and killing the horses. One
Englishman watched the Duke, and plotted to kill him; he
would have struck him with his lance, but he could not, for the
Duke struck him first, and felled him to the earth.

"Loud was now the clamor and great the slaughter; many
a soul then quitted the body it inhabited. The living marched
over the heaps of dead, and each side was weary of striking.
He charged on who could, and he who could no longer strike
still pushed forward. The strong struggled with the strong;
some failed, others triumphed ; the cowards fell back, the brave
pressed on; and sad was his fate who fell in the midst, for he
had little chance of rising again; and many in truth fell who
never rose at all, being crushed under the throng.

"And now the Normans had pressed on so far that at last
they had reached the standard. There Harold had remained,
defending himself to the utmost; but he was sorely wounded
in his eye by the arrow, and suffered grievous pain from the
blow. An armed man came in the throng of the battle, and
struck him on the ventail of his helmet, and beat him to the
ground; and as he sought to recover himself a knight beat him
down again, striking him on the thick of his thigh, down to the
bone.

"Gurth saw the English falling around, and that there was
no remedy. He saw his race hastening to ruin, and despaired
of any aid; he would have fled, but could not, for the throng
continually increased. And the Duke pushed oti till he reached
him, and struck him with great force. Whether he died of that
blow I know not, but it was said that he fell under it and rose
no more.

"The standard was beaten down, the golden standard was
taken, and Harold and the rest of his friends were slain; but
there was so much eagerness, and throng of so many around,
seeking to kill him, that I know not who it was that slew him.

"The English were in great trouble at having lost their
King and at the Duke's having conquered and beat down the
standard; but they still fought on, and defended themselves

228 NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND

long, and in fact till the day drew to a close. Then it clearly
appeared to all that the standard was lost, and the news had
spread throughout the army that Harold, for certain, was dead;
and all saw that there was no longer any hope, so they left the
field, and those fled who could.

"William fought well; many an assault did he lead, many
a blow did he give, and many receive, and many fell dead under
his hand. Two horses were killed under him, and he took a
third when necessary, so that he fell not to the ground and lost
not a drop of blood. But whatever anyone did, and whoever
lived or died, this is certain that William conquered and that
many of the English fled from the field, and many died on the
spot. Then he returned thanks to God, and in his pride ordered
his standard to be brought and set up on high, where the Eng-
lish standard had stood; and that was the signal of his having
conquered, and beaten down the standard. And he ordered
his tent to be raised on the spot among the dead, and had his
meat brought thither, and his supper prepared there.

"Then he took off his armor; and the barons and knights,
pages and squires came, when he had unstrung his shield; and
they took the helmet from his head and the hauberk from his
back, and saw the heavy blows upon his shield and how his
helmet was dinted in. And all greatly wondered and said:
' Such a baron (her) never bestrode war-horse nor dealt such
blows nor did such feats of arms; neither has there been on
earth such a knight since Rollant and Oliver.*

" Thus they lauded and extolled him greatly and rejoiced
in what they saw, but grieving also for their friends who were
slain in the battle. And the Duke stood meanwhile among them,
of noble stature and mien, and rendered thanks to the King
of Glory, through whom he had the victory, and thanked the
knights around him, mourning also frequently for the dead.
And he ate and drank among the dead, and made his bed that
night upon the field.

"The morrow was Sunday; and those who had slept upon
the field of battle, keeping watch around and suffering great
fatigue, bestirred themselves at break of day and sought out
and buried such of the bodies of their dead friends as they might
find. The noble ladies of the land also came, some to seek their

NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 229

husbands, and others their fathers, sons, or brothers. They
bore the bodies to their villages and interred them at the
churches; and the clerks and priests of the country were ready,
and at the request of their friends took the bodies that were
found, and prepared graves and lay them therein.

"King Harold was carried and buried at Varham; but I
know not who it was that bore him thither, neither do I know
who buried him. Many remained on the field, and many had
fled in the night."

Such is a Norman account of the battle of Hastings, which
does full justice to the valor of the Saxons as well as to the skill
and bravery of the victors. It is indeed evident that the loss of
the battle by the English was owing to the wound which Harold
received in the afternoon, and which must have incapacitated
him from effective command. When we remember that he had
himself just won the battle of Stamford Bridge over Harald
Hardrada by the manoeuvre of a feigned flight, it is impossible
to suppose that he could be deceived by the same stratagem on
the part of the Normans at Hastings. But his men, when de-
prived of his control, would very naturally be led by their incon-
siderate ardor into the pursuit that proved so fatal to them.
All the narratives of the battle, however much they vary as to
the precise time and manner of Harold's fall, eulogize the gen-
eralship and the personal prowess which he displayed until the
fatal arrow struck him. The skill with which he had posted
his army was proved both by the slaughter which it cost the
Normans to force the position, and also by the desperate rally
which some of the Saxons made after the battle in the forest in
the rear, in which they cut off a large number of the pursuing
Normans. This circumstance is particularly mentioned by
William of Poictiers, the Conqueror's own chaplain. Indeed,
if Harold or either of his brothers had survived, the remains
of the English army might have formed again in the wood, and
could at least have effected an orderly retreat and prolonged
the war. But both Gurth and Leofwine, and all the bravest
thanes of Southern England, lay dead on Senlac, around their
fallen King and the fallen standard of their country. The exact
number that perished on the Saxons' side is unknown; but we
read that, on the side of the victors, out of sixty thousand men

230 NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND

who had been engaged, no less than a fourth perished ; so well
had the English billmen "plyed the ghastly blow," and so
sternly had the Saxon battle-axe cloven Norman's casque and
mail. The old historian Daniel justly as well as forcibly re-
marks: "Thus was tried, by the great assize of God's judgment
in battle, the right of power between the English and Norman
nations; a battle the most memorable of all others, and, however
miserably lost, yet most nobly fought on the part of England."

Many a pathetic legend was told in after years respecting
the discovery and the burial of the corpse of our last Saxon King.
The main circumstances, though they seem to vary, are perhaps
reconcilable. Two of the monks of Waltham Abbey, which
Harold had founded a little time before his election to the
throne, had accompanied him to the battle. On the morning
after the slaughter they begged and gained permission of the
Conqueror to search for the body of their benefactor. The
Norman soldiery and camp followers had stripped and gashed
the slain, and the two monks vainly strove to recognize from
among the mutilated and gory heaps around them the features
of their former King. They sent for Harold's mistress, Edith,
surnamed "the Fair," and "the Swan-necked," to aid them.
The eye of love proved keener than the eye of gratitude, and
the Saxon lady even in that Aceldama knew her Harold.

The King's mother now sought the victorious Norman, and
begged the dead body of her son. But William at first answered,
in his wrath and the hardness of his heart, that a man who had
been false to his word and his religion should have no other
sepulchre than the sand of the shore. He added, with a sneer:
"Harold mounted guard on the coast while he was alive; he
may continue his guard now he is dead." The taunt was an
unintentional eulogy; and a grave washed by the spray of the
Sussex waves would have been the noblest burial-place for the
martyr of Saxon freedom. But Harold's mother was urgent in
her lamentations and her prayers; the Conqueror relented: like
Achilles, he gave up the dead body of his fallen foe to a parent's
supplications, and the remains of King Harold were deposited
with regal honors in Waltham Abbey.

On Christmas Day in the same year Williair the Conqueror
was crowned, at London, King of England.

TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND

« THE TURNING-POINT OF THE MIDDLE AGES : "
HENRY IV BEGS FOR MERCY AT CANOSSA

A.D. 1073-1085

ARTHUR R. PENNINGTON ARTAUD DE MONTOR

If during the pontificate of Innocent III (1198-1216) the papal power
attained its greatest height, yet under one of his predecessors the chair
of St. Peter became a throne of almost absolute supremacy. This
mighty pontiff, Gregory VII, whose real name, Hildebrand, indicates
his German descent, was born — the son of a carpenter — in Tuscany,
about 1020. He became a monk of the Benedictine order, and was edu-
cated at the abbey of Cluny in France. In 1044 he went to Rome, called
by a papal election, and there saw abuses which from that moment he
fixed his mind upon striving to abolish. In 1048 he was again in Rome
and soon rose to the rank of cardinal.

For many years Hildebrand was the real director of papal policy, and
long before his election as pope, in 1073, he worked to accomplish the
reforms that distinguish his pontificate, which continued till his death,
in 1085.

As a part of the Holy Roman Empire, Italy held a dual relation
to the emperor and the pope. Between the Roman pontiffs and the secu-
lar heads of the Empire the struggle for supremacy had been long and
often bitter. At the time of Hildebrand's active appearance the papacy
was in a state of degradation which demoralized the Church itself.

Long before his elevation to the papal chair Hildebrand's efforts had
met with much success, and the power of the holy see was gradually in-
creased. Independently of the Emperor, whose will had hitherto gov-
erned the papal elections, in 1058 — chiefly through the influence of Hilde-
brand—Pope Nicholas II was chosen by a new method, and from that
time the choice of popes has been made by the sacred college of cardi-
nals.

Hildebrand reluctantly accepted the office of pope ; but having entered
upon the task which he knew to be so formidable, he pursued it with
such energy, courage, and success as to make his pontificate one of the
most memorable in the annals of the Church. Of his greatest contests
within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction — over the celibacy of the clergy and
simony — as well as of those with the Imperial power represented by

231

232 TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND

Henry IV — the "War of Investitures" — the following account will be
found to present the essential features with a clearness and comprehen-
siveness which are seldom seen in the relation of matter so complex and
in a narrative so concise. The differing viewpoints are also instructive,
as presented by Pennington of the Church of England, and Artaud, the
standard Roman Catholic authority.

'"THE time had come when Hildebrand was to receive the
reward of the important services which he had rendered
to the holy see. He had been the ruling spirit under five
popes — Leo, Victor, Stephen, Nicholas, and Alexander — four
of whom were indebted to him for their election. But now he
must himself be raised to the papal throne.

The clergy were assembled in the Lateran Church to cele-
brate the obsequies of Alexander. Hildebrand, as archdeacon,
was performing the service. Suddenly, in the midst of the
requiem for the departed, a shout was heard which seemed to
come as if by inspiration from the assembled multitude: "Hil-
debrand is Pope! St. Peter chooses the archdeacon Hilde-
brand!"

From the funeral procession Hildebrand flew to the pulpit,
and with impassioned gestures seemed to be imploring silence.
The storm, however, did not cease till one of the cardinals, in
the name of the sacred college, declared that they had unani-
mously elected him whom the people had chosen. Arrayed in
scarlet robes, crowned with the papal tiara, Gregory VII
ascended the chair of St. Peter.

The Pope very soon made known the course which he
should pursue. He issued a prohibition against the marriage
of the clergy, and in a council at Rome abolished the right of
investiture.1 He was determined to redress the wrongs of
society. He had seen oppression laying waste the fairest prov-
inces of Europe, he had seen many princes, goaded on by the
revengeful passions of their nature, flinging wide their standard
to the winds, and dipping their hands in the blood of those who,
if Christianity be not a fable, were their very brothers. A
magnificent vision rose up before him. He would rule the

1 That is, the right of the civil power to grant church offices at will,
and to invest ecclesiastics with symbols of their offices and receive their
oaths of fealty.

TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND 233

world by religion; he would be the caesar of the spiritual mon-
archy. He and a council of prelates, annually assembled at
Rome, would constitute a tribunal from whose judgment there
should be no appeal, empowered to hold the supreme mediation
in matters relating to the interests of the body politic, to settle
contested successions to kingdoms; and to compel men to cease
from their dissensions.

The civil power was to pledge itself to be prompt in the
execution of their decrees against those who despised their
authority. But if the decisions of those judges were to carry
weight, they must be men of unblemished integrity. The
purity of their ermine must be altogether unsullied. The sale
of the highest spiritual offices by the prince, who had deprived
the clergy and people of their right to elect them, which had
stained the hands of the Church and undermined its power, must
be altogether forbidden. Elections must be free. The custom
of investiture by sovereigns with the ring and crozier, which had
rendered the hierarchy and clergy the creatures of their will,
must be forbidden.

The clergy must possess an absolute exemption from the
criminal justice of the state. They must recognize but one
ruler, the pope, who disposed of them indirectly through the
bishops or directly in cases of exemption, and used them as
tools for the execution of his behests. In fact, they were to con-
stitute a vast army, exclusively devoted to the service of an
ecclesiastical monarch.

They must be unconnected by marriage with the world
around them, that they might be bound more closely to one
another and to their head; that they might Be saved from the
temptation of restless projects for the advancement of their
families, which have caused so much scandal in the world;
and that they might give an exalted idea of their sanctity, inas-
much as, in order that they might give themselves to prayer and
the ministry of the Word, they would forego that connubial

bliss, the portion of those,

" The happiest of their kind,
Whom gentler stars unite and in one fate
Their hearts, their fortunes, and their beings blend."

The marriage of the clergy was everywhere more or less re-

234 TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND

pugnant to the general feeling of Christendom. The rise and
progress of asceticism in the Church had their source in human
nature, and its growth was quickened by a reaction from the
immorality of paganism. The general effect on the position of
the clergy was to compel them to keep progress with the pre-
vailing movement. Men consecrated to the service of Jehovah
must rise superior to the common herd of their fellow-crea-
tures.

By a decree of Pope Siricius at the end of the fourth century
marriage was interdicted to all priests and deacons. This
decree was, however, very imperfectly observed during the
following centuries. The general feeling was, however, at this
time very strongly against the married clergy. But throughout
the spiritual realm of Hildebrand in Italy, from Calabria to the
Alps, the clergy had risen up in rebellion against him and the
popes his predecessors when they attempted to coerce them
into celibacy. We believe that this opposition, much more
than the strife as to investitures, was the cause of the strong
feeling, almost unprecedented, which existed against Gregory
VII.

We must now show that Gregory enforced his views as to
investitures. This part of our subject is important, because it
gave occasion for the assertion that the pope could depose the
Holy Roman emperor and the king of Italy, if he should find
him morally or physically disqualified for fulfilling the condi-
tion on which his appointment depended — that he should
defend him from his enemies. Henry IV, at the beginning of
his reign only ten years of age, was at this time Emperor.1

One day, as he was standing by the Rhine, a galley with
silken streamers appeared, into which he was invited to enter.
After he had been gliding for some time down the stream, he
found that he was a prisoner. The archbishops of Milan and
Cologne, with other powerful lords, having consigned him to
a degrading captivity, administered, in his name, the govern-
ment of the empire. By affording him every means of vicious
indulgence, they were only too successful in corrupting a noble
and generous nature. Very soon he was guilty of crimes, and

1 That is, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, which included the
German-speaking people of Europe, and also, in theory at least, Italy.

TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND 235

plunged into excesses which seemed to cry aloud for ven-
geance.

The Pope saw that the time had come for the execution of
his designs. Henry had been guilty of the grossest simony.
The spiritual dignities had been openly sold to the highest
bidder. He saw also that, while the clergy took the oath of
fealty to the monarch and were invested by him with the ring
and crozier, he could not establish the superiority of the spir-
itual to the temporal jurisdiction. He therefore summoned a
council at the Lateran (1075), which issued a decree against
lay investitures. The Pope, having thus declared war against the
Emperor, proceeded to fill up certain vacant bishoprics, and to
suspend bishops, both hi Germany and Italy, who had been
guilty of simony. He also cited Henry before him to answer
for his simony, crimes, and excesses.

This citation is alleged to have given occasion for an attempted
crime, supposed to have been sanctioned by Henry, which may
show us that while the Pope was asserting a right to rule over
the nations, he could not rule in his own city. On Christmas
Eve, 1075, the city of Rome was visited with a violent tempest.
Darkness brooded over the land. The inhabitants thought that
the day of judgment was at hand. In the midst of this war of
the elements two processions were seen advancing toward the
Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. At the head of one of them
was Hildebrand, leading his priests to worship at a shrine.
At the head of the other was Cencius, a Roman noble. In one
of the pauses in the roar of the tempest, when the Pope was heard
blessing his flock, the arm of Cencius grasped his person, and
the sword of a ruffian inflicted a wound on his forehead. Bound
with cords, the Pope was removed to a mansion in the city,
from which he was the next day to be removed to exile or to
death. A sword was aimed at the Pontiff's bosom, when the
cries of a fierce multitude, threatening to burn down the house,
arrested the arm of the assassin. An arrow, discharged from
below, reached and slew the latter. Cencius fell at the Pope's
feet, a suppliant for pardon and for life. The Pontiff imme-
diately pardoned him. Then, amid the acclamations of the
Roman people, Gregory proceeded to complete the interrupted
solemnities at Santa Maria Maggiore.

236 TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND

The war between Henry and the Pope continued. Henry
summoned a synod at Worms in January, 1076, which decreed
the deposition of the Pope. The envoy charged to convey this
sentence appeared in the council chamber of the Lateran hi
February, before an assembly consisting of the mightiest in
the land, whom the Pope had summoned to sit in judgment on
Henry. With flashing eyes and in a voice of thunder he directed
the Pope to descend from the chair of St. Peter. Cries of in-
dignation rang through the hall, and a hundred swords were
seen leaping from their scabbards to inflict vengeance on the
daring intruder. The Pope, with difficulty, stilled the angry
tumult. Then, rising with calm dignity, amid the breathless
silence of the assembled multitude, he uttered that dread an-
athema which "shuts paradise and opens hell," and absolved
the subjects of Henry from their allegiance.

The inhabitants of Europe were struck dumb with amaze-
ment when they witnessed this exercise of papal prerogative.
They thought that the powerful arm of Henry would have
been raised to smite down the audacious Hildebrand. The
Pope, however, well knew that Henry had by his excesses
alienated from himself the affections of his subjects. The
sentence gave a pretext to many of his nobility to withdraw
from their allegiance. Awed by spiritual terrors, his attendants
fell away from him as if he had been smitten by a leprosy. An
assembly was now summoned at Trebur, in obedience to a
requisition from the Pope, at which it was decreed that, if the
Emperor continued excommunicate on the 23d of February,
1077, his crown should be given to another. The theory of the
Holy Roman Empire had thus become a practical reality.
The vassal of Otho had reduced the successor of Otho to vas-
salage. A great pope had wrung from the superstition and
reverence of mankind a spiritual empire, which, it was hoped,
would extend its sway to earth's remotest boundaries.

ARTAUD DE MONTOR

Gregory made it an invariable rule to act at the outset
with gentleness. "No one, ' says he, "reaches the highest
rank at a single spring; great edifices rise gradually." Cer-
tain of his strength, he chose to employ conciliation. He

TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND 237

especially sought to convince Henry, but the excesses in which
that prince wallowed were so abominable that his subjects in
all parts, and especially the great, revolted against him.
In 1076, G egory assembled a council, which pronounced the
excommunication of the King, with all the terrible conse-
quences attendant upon it.

History shows several emperors of the East excom-
municated by preceding popes: Arcadius, by Innocent I;
Anastasius, by Saint Symmachus; and Leo the Isaurian, by
Gregory II and Gregory III.

The decree of the same council set forth that the throne
vacated by Henry was adjudged to Rudolph, duke of Swabia,
already created king of Germany by the electors of the
empire.

Before the election of Rudolph, Gregory had declared
that he would repa'r to Germany. King Henry, on his part,
piomised to come into Italy. The Pope left Rome with an
escort furnished by the countess of Tuscany, daughter of
Boniface, marquis of Tuscany. The march of Gregory was
a triumph. Amidst that escort he reached Vercelli. It was
feared by some that Henry would make his appearance at
the head of an army, but he had not that intention. The
Pope, nevertheless, deemed it best to retire into the fortress
of Canossa, belonging to the Countess Matilda, in order that
he might be secure from all violence.

Henry had spent nearly two months at Spires in a profound
and melancholy solitude. The weight of the excommunica-
tion oppressed him with a thousand griefs. Weary of that
state of uncertainty, and still, as ever, tricky and hypocritical,
he conceived the idea of winning over the Pope by an apparent
piety, and of satisfying his requirements by a brief humiliation;
moreover, the decree of excommunication declared that it
should be withdrawn if the King appeared before the Pope
within a year from the date of the decree. The winter was
severe. After running a thousand dangers, the King and his
queen arrived at Turin, and proceeded to Placentia. Thence
the prince announced that he would proceed to Canossa, by
way of Reggio.

The Countess Matilda met him with Hugo, Bishop of

238 TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND

Cluny. She wished to restore harmony between the Pope
and the King. Gregory seemed to desire that Henry should
return to Augsburg, to be judged by the Diet. The envoys
of the King at Canossa replied: "Henry does not fear being
judged; he knows that the Pope will protect innocence and
justice; but the anniversary of the excommunication is at
hand, and if the excommunication be not removed, the King,
according to the laws of the land, will lose his right to the crown.
The prince humbly requests the Holy Father to raise the
interdict, and to restore him to the communion of the Church.
He is ready to give every satisfaction that the Pope shall
require; to present himself at such place and at such
time as the Pope shall order; to meet his accusers, and to
commit himself entirely to the decision of the head of the
Church."

Henry, says Voigt, having received permission to advance,
was not long on the way. The fortress had triple inclosures;
Henry was conducted into the second; his retinue remained
outside the first. He had laid aside the insignia of royalty;
nothing announced his rank. All day long, Henry, bare-
headed, clad in penitential garb, and fasting from morning
till night, awaited the sentence of the sovereign pontiff. He
thus waited during a second and a third day. During the
intervening time he had not ceased to negotiate. On the
morrow, Matilda interceded with the Pope on behalf of Henry,
and the conditions of the treaty were settled. The prince
promised to give satisfaction to the complaints made against
him by his subjects, and he took an oath, in which his sureties
joined. When those oaths were taken, the pontiff gave the
King the benediction and the aspostolic peace, and celebrated
Mass.

After the consecration of the host, the Pope called Henry
and all present, and still holding the host in his hand, said
to the King: "We have received letters from you and those
of your party, in which we are accused of having usurped
the Holy See by simony, and of having, both before and since
our episcopacy, committed crimes which, according to the
canons, excluded us from holy orders.

"Although we could justify ourselves by the testimony

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TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND 239

of those who have known our manner of life from our child-
hood, and who were the authors of our promotion to the
episcopacy, nevertheless, to do away with all kind of scandal,
we will appeal to the judgment, not of men, but of God. Let
the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we are about to take,
be this day a proof of our innocence. We pray the Almighty
to dispel all suspicion, if we are innocent, and to cause us
suddenly to die, if we are guilty."

Then turning towards the King, Gregory again spoke:
"Dear son, do also as you have seen us do. The German
princes have daily accused you to us of a great number of
crimes, for which those nobles maintain that you ought to
be interdicted, during your whole life, not only from royalty
and all public function, but also from all ecclesiastical com-
munion, and from all commerce of civil life. They urgently
demand that you be judged, and you know how uncertain
are all human judgments. Do, then, as we advise, and if
you feel that you are innocent, deliver the Church from this
scandal, and yourself from this embarrassment. Take this
other portion of the host, that this proof of your innocence
may close the lips of your enemies, and engage us to be your
most ardent defender, to reconcile you with the nobles, and
forever to terminate the civil war."

This address astonished the King. Going apart with his
confidants, he tremblingly consulted as to what he could do
to avoid so terrible a test. At length, having somewhat re-
covered his calmness, he said to the Pope, that as those nobles
who remained faithful were, for the most part, absent, as well
as those who accused him, the latter would give little faith
to what he might do in his own justification, unless it were
done in their presence. For that reason, be asked that the
test should be postponed to the day of the sitting of the
general diet, and the Pope consented.

When the Pope had finished Mass, he invited the King to
dinner, treated him with much attention, and dismissed him
in peace to his own people, who had remained outside the
castle. Henry, on his return to his nobles, was not well re-
ceived. Henry, as Voigt shows, soon became alarmed at
their disapprobation, which originated only in a feeling of

24o TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND

wounded complicity and ambitious views, which could not
hope for success after the victory gained by Gregory.

Henry, hearing himself accused of weakness, thought to
deliver himself from so much annoyance by a bold perjury;
and he endeavored to draw Gregory and Matilda into a snare.
Warned by faithful friends, they did not visit the King as
had been agreed; and that new wrong determined Gregory
to suspend his departure for the Diet of Augsburg. No one,
not even the pious Matilda, now dared to speak of a rec-
onciliation.

Henry held at Brescia, in 1080, a pseudo council of the
bishops devoted to him; and there he caused Guibert, Arch-
bishop of Ravenna, an avowed enemy of Gregory, to be
elected as Pope; and he deposed Gregory, although he was
recognized as the legitimate pope by the whole Catholic
world, with the exception of the bishops in revolt, under the
direction of Henry. On learning this, Gregory celebrated at
Rome, in the year 1080, a regular council, in which he again
excommunicated Henry, and especially the antipope, whom
he would never absolve.

ARTHUR PENNINGTON

The war continued. Henry's rival for the empire, Rudolph
of Swabia, was supported by many German partisans, espe-
cially by the Saxons. He was defeated with great loss at
Fladenheim. The skill and courage of the Saxon commander,
however, turned a defeat into a victory. Emboldened by
this victory, Gregory excommunicated Henry, and "gave,
granted, and conceded" that Rudolph might rule the Italian
and German empires. With the sanction of thirty bishops, an
antipope, Guibert, was elected at Brixen. The war raged with
undiminished violence. The Saxons, the only power in alliance
with the Romans, gained a victory over Henry in Germany at
the very same time when Matilda's forces fled before his army
in the Mantuan territory. Matilda had lately granted all her
hereditary states to Gregory and his successors forever. Be-
fore the summer of the year 1080 the citizens of Rome saw the
forces of Henry in the Campagna. The siege of Rome con-
tinued for three years. The capture of the city was imminent,

TRIUMPHS OF HTLDEBRAND 241

when the forces of Robert Guiscard, the Norman, came to the
rescue of the Pope.

Nicholas II had bestowed on Robert Guiscard the investi-
ture of the duchies of Apulia and Calabria; Sicily also, the con-
quest of which his brother Richard was meditating, being pros-
pectively added to Robert's dominions. The oath taken by
Robert Guiscard on this occasion bound h m to be the devoted
defender of the pontificate. He now became a friend indeed.
A hasty retreat saved the forces of Henry from the impending
danger. The Pope returned in triumph to the Lateran. But
within a few hours he heard from the streets the clash of arms
and the loud shouts of the combatants. A fierce contest was
raging between the soldiers of Robert and the citizens who
espoused the cause of Henry. A conflagration was kindled,
which at length destroyed three-fourths of the city. Gregory,
perhaps conscience-stricken when he thought of the wars he
had kindled, sought, in the castle of Salerno, from the Normans
the security which he could no longer expect among his own
subjects. He soon found that the hand of death was upon Mm.
He summoned round his bed the bishops and cardinals who
had accompanied him in his flight from Rome. He maintained
the truth of the principles for which he had always contended.
He forgave and blessed his enemies, with the exception of the
antipope and the Emperor. He had received the transub-
stantiated elements. The final unction had been given to
him. He then prepared himself to die. Anxious to catch the
last words from that tongue, to the utterances of which they
had always listened with intense delight, his followers were
bending over him, when, collecting his powers for one last
effort, he said, in an indignant tone, " I have loved righteous-
ness and hated iniquity, and, therefore, I die in exile."

COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK

A.D. 1086

CHARLES KNIGHT

When William the Conqueror had been some years established in his
English realm, he found himself confronted with a feudal baronage
largely composed of men who had gone with him from Normandy, where
many of them had reluctantly bowed to his command. They were jeal-
ous of the royal power and eager for military and judicial independence
within their own manors. The Conqueror met this situation with the
skill of political genius. He granted large estates to the nobles, but so
widely scattered as to render union of the great land-owners and heredi-
tary attachment of great areas of population to separate feudal lords im-
possible. He caused under-tenants to be bound to their lords by the
same conditions of service which bound the lords to the crown, to which
each sub-tenant swore direct fealty. William also strengthened his posi-
tion as king by means of a new military organization and by his control
of the judicial and administrative systems of the kingdom. By the abo-
lition of the four great earldoms of the realm he struck a final blow at
the ambition of the greater nobles for independent power. By this stroke
he made the shire the largest unit of local government. By his control
of the national revenues he secured a great financial power in his own
hands.

A large part of the manors were burdened with special dues to the
crown, and for the purpose of ascertaining and recording these William
sent into each county commissioners to make a survey, whose inquiries
were recorded in the Domesday Book, so called because its decision was
regarded as final. This book, in Norm an- French, contains the results
of his survey of England made in 1085-1086, and consists of two volumes
in vellum, a large folio of three hundred and eighty-two pages, and a
quarto of four hundred and fifty pages. For a long time it was kept
under three locks in the exchequer with the King's seal, and is now kept
in the Public Record Office. In 1783 the British Government issued a
fac-simile edition of it, in two folio volumes, printed from types specially
made for the purpose. It is one of the principal sources for the political
and social history of the time.

The Domesday Book contains a record of the ownership, extent, and
value of the lands of England at the time of the survey, at the time of
their bestowal when granted by the King, and at the time of a previous

242

COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK 243

survey under Edward the Confessor. Of the detailed registrations of
tenants, defendants, live stock, etc., as well as of contemporary social
features of the English people, the following account presents interest-
ing pictures.

HP HE survey contained in the Domesday Book extended to all
England, with the exception of Northumberland, Cum-
berland, Westmoreland, and Durham. All the country between
the Tees and the Tyne was held by the Bishop of Durham ; and
he was reputed a count palatine, having a separate government.
The other three northern counties were probably so devastated
that they were purposely omitted. Let us first see, from the
information of Domesday Book, by "what men" the land was
occupied.

First, we have barons and we have thanes. The barons
were the Norman nobles; the thanes, the Saxon. These were
included under the general designation of liberi homines, free
men; which term included all the freeholders of a manor.
Many of these were tenants of the King "in capite " — that is,
they held their possessions direct from the Crown. Others of
these had placed themselves under the protection of some lord,
as the defender of their persons and estates, they paying some
stipend or performing some service. In the Register there are
also libera femina, free women. Next to the free class were the
sochemanni or "socmen," a class of inferior land-owners, who
held lands under a lord, and owed suit and service in the lord's
court, but whose tenure was permanent. They sometimes per-
formed services in husbandry; but those services, as well as
their payments, were defined.

Descending in the scale, we come to the villani. These were
allowed to occupy land at the will of the lord, upon the condi-
tion of performing services, uncertain in their amount and
often of the meanest nature. But they could acquire no prop-
erty in lands or goods; and they were subject to many exac-
tions and oppressions. There are entries in Domesday Book
which show that the villani were not altogether bondmen, but
represented the Saxon "churl." The lowest class were servi,
slaves; the class corresponding with the Saxon theow. By a
degradation in the condition of the villani, and the elevation of
that of the servi, the two classes were brought gradually nearer

244 COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK

together; till at last the military oppression of the Normans,
thrusting down all degrees of tenants and servants into one
common slavery, or at least into strict dependence, one name
was adopted for both of them as a generic term, that of villeins
regardant.

Of the subdivisions of these great classes, the Register of 1085
affords us some particulars. We find that some of the nobles are
described as milites, soldiers; and sometimes the milites are
classed with the inferior orders of tenantry. Many of the chief
tenants are distinguished by their offices. We have among these
the great regal officers, such as they existed in the Saxon times —
the camerarius and cubicularius, from whom we have our lord
chamberlain; the dapijer, or lord steward; the pincerna, or
chief butler; the constable, and the treasurer. We have the
hawkkeepers, and the bowkeepers; the providers of the king's
carriages, and his standard-bearers. We have lawmen, and
legates, and mediciners. We have foresters and hunters.

Coming to the inferior officers and artificers, we have car-
penters, smiths, goldsmiths, farriers, potters, ditchers, launders,
armorers, fishermen, millers, bakers, salters, tailors, and bar-
bers. We have mariners, moneyers, minstrels, and watchmen.
Of rural occupations we have the beekeepers, ploughmen,
shepherds, neatherds, goatherds, and swineherds. Here is a
population in which there is a large division of labor. The free-
men, tenants, villeins, slaves, are laboring and deriving suste-
nance from arable land, meadow, common pasture, wood, and
water. The grain-growing land is, of course, carefully regis-
tered as to its extent and value, and so the meadow and pasture.
An equal exactness is bestowed upon the woods. It was not that
the timber was of great commercial value, in a country which
possessed such insufficient means of transport; but that the
acorns and beech-mast, upon which great herds of swine sub-
sisted, were of essential importance to keep up the supply of
food. We constantly find such entries as " a wood for pannage
of fifty hogs." There are woods described which will feed a
hundred, two hundred, three hundred hogs; and on the Bishop
of London's demesne at Fulham a thousand hogs could fatten.
The value of a tree was determined by the number of hogs that
could lie under it, in the Saxon time; and in this survey of the

COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK 245

Norman period, we find entries of useless woods, and woods
without pannage, which to some extent were considered iden-
tical. In some of the woods there were patches of cultivated
ground, as the entries show, where the tenant had cleared the
dense undergrowth and had his corn land and his meadows.
Even the fen lands were of value, for their rents were paid in
eels.

There is only mention of five forests in this record, Wind-
sor, Gravelings (Wiltshire), Winburn, Which wood, and the New
Forest. Undoubtedly there were many more, but being no
objects of assessment they are passed over. It would be difficult
not to associate the memory of the Conqueror with the New
Forest, and not to believe that his unbridled will was here the
cause of great misery and devastation. Ordericus Vitalis says,
speaking of the death of William's second son, Richard : " Learn
now, my reader, why the forest in which the young prince was
slain received the name of the New Forest. That part of the
country was extremely populous from early times, and full of
well-inhabited hamlets and farms. A numerous population
cultivated Hampshire with unceasing industry, so that the
southern part of the district plentifully supplied Winchester
with the products of the land. When William I ascended the
throne of Albion, being a great lover of forests, he laid waste
more than sixty parishes, compelling the inhabitants to emigrate
to other places, and substituted beasts of the chase for human
beings, that he might satisfy his ardor for hunting." There
is probably some exaggeration in the statement of the country
being "extremely populous from early times." This was an old
woody district, called Ytene. No forest was artificially planted,
as Voltaire has imagined; but the chases were opened through
the ancient thickets, and hamlets and solitary cottages were
demolished.

It is a curious fact that some woodland spots in the New
Forest have still names with the terminations of ham and ton.
There are many evidences of the former existence of human
abodes in places now solitary; yet we doubt whether this part of
the district plentifully supplied Winchester with food, as Order-
icus relates; for it is a sterile district, in most places, fitted for
little else than the growth of timber. The lower lands are

246 COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK

marsh, and the upper are sand. The Conqueror, says the
Saxon Chronicle, "so much loved the high deer as if he had
been their father." The first of the Norman kings, and his
immediate successors, would not be very scrupulous about the
depopulation of a district if the presence of men interfered with
their pleasures. But Thierry thinks that the extreme severity
of the Forest Laws was chiefly enforced to prevent the assem-
blage of Saxons in those vast wooded spaces which were now
included in the royal demesnes.

All these extensive tracts were, more or less, retreats for the
dispossessed and the discontented. The Normans, under pre-
tence of preserving the stag and the hare, could tyrannize with
a pretended legality over the dwellers in these secluded places;
and thus William might have driven the Saxon people of Ytene
to emigrate, and have destroyed their cottages, as much from a
possible fear of their association as from his own love of "the
high deer." Whatever was the motive, there were devastation
and misery. Domesday shows that in the district of the New
Forest certain manors were afforested after the Conquest; cul-
tivated portions, in which the Sabbath bell was heard. Will-
iam of Jumieges, the Conqueror's own chaplain, says, speak-
ing of the deaths of Richard and Rufus: "There were many who
held that the two sons of William the King perished by the
judgment of God in these woods, since for the extension of
the forest he had destroyed many inhabited places (villas) and
churches -within its circuit." It appears that in the time of
Edward the Confessor about seventeen thousand acres of this
district had been afforested; but that the cultivated parts re-
maining had then an estimated value of three hundred and
sixty-three pounds. After the afforestation by the Conqueror,
the cultivated parts yielded only one hundred and twenty-nine
pounds.

The grants of land to huntsmen (venatores) are common in
Hampshire, as in other parts of England; and it appears to have
been the duty of an especial officer to stall the deer — that is, to
drive them with his troop of followers from all parts to the
centre of a circle, gradually contracting, where they were to
stand for the onslaught of the hunters. In the survey many
parks are enumerated. The word hay (haia), which is still

COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK 247

found in some of our counties, meant an enclosed part of a wood
to which the deer were driven.

In the seventeenth century this mode of hunting upon a
large scale, by stalling the deer — this mimic war — was common
in Scotland. Taylor, called the "Water Poet," was present at
such a gathering, and has described the scene with a minute-
ness which may help us to form a picture of the Norman hunters:
" Five or six hundred men do rise early in the morning, and they
do disperse themselves divers ways; and seven, eight, or ten
miles' compass, they do bring or chase in the deer in many
herds — two, three, or four hundred in a herd — to such a place
as the noblemen shall appoint them; then, when the day is come,
the lords and gentlemen of their companies do ride or go to the
said places, sometimes wading up to the middle through bourns
and rivers; and then they being come to the place, do lie down
on the ground till those foresaid scouts, which are called the
'tinkhelt,' do bring down the deer. Then, after we had stayed
there three hours or thereabouts, we might perceive the deer
appear on the hills round about us — their heads making a show
like a wood — which being followed close by the tinkhelt, are
chased down into the valley where we lay; then all the valley
on each side being waylaid with a hundred couple of strong
Irish greyhounds, they are let loose as occasion serves upon the
herd of deer, that with dogs, guns, arrows, dirks, and daggers,
in the space of two hours fourscore fat deer were slain."

Domesday affords indubitable proof of the culture of the
vine in England. There are thirty-eight entries of vineyards in
the southern and eastern counties. Many gardens are enu-
merated. Mills are registered with great distinctness; for they
were invariably the property of the lords of the manors, lay or
ecclesiastical; and the tenants could only grind at the lord's
mill. Wherever we find a mill specified hi Domesday, there we
generally find a mill now. At Arundel, for example, we see
what rent was paid by a mill; and there still stands at Arundel
an old mill whose foundations might have been laid before the
Conquest. Salt works are repeatedly mentioned. They were
either works upon the coast for procuring marine salt by evapo-
ration, or were established in the localities of inland salt
springs. The salt works of Cheshire were the most numerous,

248 COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK

and were called "wiches." Hence the names of some places,
such as Middlewich and Nantwich. The revenue from mines
offers some curious facts. No mention of tin is to be found
in Cornwall. The ravages of Saxon and Dane, and the constant
state of hostility between races, had destroyed much of that
mineral industry which existed in the Roman tunes. A century
and a half after the Conquest had elapsed before the Norman
kings had a revenue from the Cornish iron mines. Iron forges
were registered, and lumps of hammered iron are stated to have
been paid as rent. Lead works are found only upon the king's
demesne in Derbyshire.

Fisheries are important sources of rent. Payments of eels
are enumerated by hundreds and thousands. Herrings appear
to have been consumed in vast numbers in the monasteries.
Sandwich yielded forty thousand annually to Christ Church in
Canterbury. Kent, Sussex, and Norfolk appear to have been
the great seats of this fishery. The Severn and the Wye had
their salmon fisheries, whose produce king, bishop, and lord
were glad to receive as rent. There was a weir for Thames fish
at Mortlake. The religious houses had their piscina and vi-
varia — their stews and fish-pools.

Domesday affords us many curious glimpses of the condition
of the people in cities and burghs. For the most part they seem
to have preserved their ancient customs. London, Winchester,
and several other important places are not mentioned hi the
record. We shall very briefly notice a few indications of the
state of society. Dover was an important place, for it supplied
the king with twenty ships for fifteen days in a year, each vessel
having twenty-one men on board. Dover could therefore com-
mand the service of four hundred and twenty mariners. Every
burgess in Lewes compounded for a payment of twenty shillings
when the king fitted out a fleet to keep the sea.

At Oxford the king could command the services of twenty
burgesses whenever he went on an expedition; or they might
compound for their services by a payment of twenty pounds.
Oxford was a considerable place at this period. It contained
upward of seven hundred houses; but four hundred and seventy-
eight were so desolated that they could pay no dues. Hereford
was the king's demesne; and the honor of being his immediate

COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK 249

tenants appears to have been qualified by considerable exac-
tions. When he went to war, and when he went to hunt, men
were to be ready for his service. If the wife of a burgher brewed
his ale, he paid tenpence. The smith who kept a forge had to
make nails from the king's iron. In Hereford, as in other
cities, there were moneyers, or coiners. There were seven at
Hereford, who were bound to coin as much of the king's silver
into pence as he demanded. At Cambridge the burgesses
were compelled to lend the sheriff their ploughs. Leicester
was bound to find the king a hawk or to pay ten pounds;
while a sumpter or baggage-horse was compounded for at one
pound.

At Warwick there were two hundred and twenty-five houses
on which the king and his barons claimed tax; and nineteen
houses belonged to free burgesses. The dues were paid in honey
and corn. In Shrewsbury there were two hundred and fifty-two
houses belonging to burgesses; but the burgesses complained
that they were called upon to pay as much tax as in the time of
the Confessor, although Earl Roger had taken possession of
extensive lands for building his castle. Chester was a port in
which the king had his dues upon every cargo, and where he
had fines whenever a trader was detected in using a false meas-
ure. The fraudulent female brewer of adulterated beer was
placed in the cucking-stool, a degradation afterward reserved
for scolds.

This city has a more particular notice as to laws and cus-
toms in the time of the Confessor than any other place in the
survey. Particular care seems to have been taken against fire.
The owner of a house on fire not only paid a fine to the king,
but forfeited two shillings to his nearest neighbor. Marten
skins appear to have been a great article of trade in this city.
No stranger could cart goods within a particular part of the city
without being subjected to a forfeiture of four shillings or two
oxen to the bishop. We find, as might be expected, no mention
of that peculiar architecture of Chester called the "Rows,"
which has so puzzled antiquarian writers. The probability is
that in a place so exposed to the attacks of the Welsh they were
intended for defence. The low streets in which the Rows are
situated have the road considerably beneath them, like ths

250 COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK

cutting of a railway; and from the covered way of the Rows an
enemy in the road beneath might be assailed with great advan-
tage.

In the civil wars of Charles I the possession of the Rows by
the Royalists, or Parliamentary troops, was fiercely contested.
Of their antiquity there is no doubt. They probably belong to
the same period as the Castle. The wall of Chester and the
bridge were kept in repair, according to the survey, by the ser-
vice of one laborer for every hide of land in the county. It is
to be remarked that in all the cities and burghs the inhabitants
are described as belonging to the king or a bishop or a baron.
Many, even in the most privileged places, were attached to
particular manors.

The Domesday survey shows that in some towns there was
an admixture of Norman and English burgesses; and it is clear
that they were so settled after the Conquest, for a distinction is
made between the old customary dues of the place and those
the foreigner should pay. The foreigner had to bear a small
addition to the ancient charge. No doubt the Norman clung to
many of the habits of his own land; and the Saxon unwillingly
parted with those of the locality in which his fathers had lived.
But their manners were gradually assimilated. The Normans
grew fond of the English beer, and the English adopted the
Norman dress.

The survey of 1085 affords the most complete evidence of
the extent to which the Normans had possessed themselves of
the landed property of the country. The ancient demesnes of
the crown consisted of fourteen hundred and twenty-two man-
ors. But the king had confiscated the properties of Godwin,
Harold, Algar, Edwin, Morcar, and other great Saxon earls;
and his revenues thus became enormous. Ordericus Vitalis
states, with a minuteness that seems to imply the possession of
official information, that " the king himself received daily one-
and-sixty pounds thirty thousand pence and three farthings
sterling money from his regular revenues in England alone,
independently of presents, fines for offences, and many other
matters which constantly enrich a royal treasury." The num-
bers of manors held by the favorites of the Conqueror would
appear incredible, if we did not know that these great nobles

COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK 251

were grasping and unscrupulous; indulging the grossest sen-
suality with a pretence of refinement; limited in their per-
petration of injustice only by the extent of their power; and so
blinded by their pride as to call their plunder their inheritance.
Ten Norman chiefs who held under the crown are enumerated
in the survey as possessing two thousand eight hundred and
twenty manors.

This enormous transfer of property did not take place without
the most formidable resistance, but when a period of tranquillity
arrived came the era of castle-building. The Saxons had their
rude fortresses and intrenched earthworks. But solid walls of
stone, for defence and residence, were to become the local seats
of regal and baronial domination. Domesday contains notices
of forty-nine castles; but only one is mentioned as having
existed in the time of Edward the Confessor. Some which the
Conqueror is known to have built are not noticed in the survey.
Among these is the White Tower of London. The site of Roch-
ester Castle is mentioned. These two buildings are associated
by our old antiquaries as being erected by the same architect.
Stow says: " I find in a fair register-book of the acts of the bish-
ops of Rochester, set down by Edmund of Hadenham, that
William I, surnamed Conqueror, builded the Tower of London,
to wit, the great white and square tower there, about the year
of Christ 1078, appointing Gundulph, then Bishop of Roch-
ester, to be principal surveyor and overseer of that work, who
was for that time lodged in the house of Edmere, a burghess of
London." The chapel hi the White Tower is a remarkable
specimen of early Norman architecture.

The keep of Rochester Castle, so picturesquely situated on
the Medway, was not a mere fortress without domestic con-
venience. Here we still look upon the remains of sculptured
columns and arches. We see where there were spacious fire-
places in the walls, and how each of four floors was served with
water by a well. The third story contains the most ornamental
portions of the building. In the Domesday enumeration of
castles, we have repeated mention of houses destroyed and
lands wasted, for their erection. At Cambridge twenty-seven
houses are recorded to have been thus demolished. This was
the fortress to overawe the fen districts. At Lincoln a hundred

252 COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK

and sixty-six mansions were destroyed, "on account of the
castle."

In the ruins of all these castles we may trace their general
plan. There were an outer court, an inner court, and a keep.
Round the whole area was a wall, with parapets and loopholes.
The entrance was defended by an outwork or barbacan. The
prodigious strength of the keep is the most remarkable charac-
teristic'of these fortresses; and thus many of these towers re-
main, stripped of every interior fitting by time, but as untouched
in their solid construction as the mounts upon which they stand.
We ascend the steep steps which lead to the ruined keep of
Carisbrook, with all our historical associations directed to
the confinement of Charles I in this castle. But this fortress
was registered in Domesday Book. Five centuries and a half
had elapsed between William I and James I. The Norman
keep was out of harmony with the principles of the seventeenth
century, as much as the feudal prerogatives to which Charles
unhappily clung.

We have thus enumerated some of the more prominent
statistics of this ancient survey, which are truly as much matter
of history as the events of this beginning of the Norman period.
There is one more feature of this Domesday Book which we
cannot pass over. The number of parish churches in England
in the eleventh century will, in some degree, furnish an indica-
tion of the amount of religious instruction. By some most
extraordinary exaggeration, the number of these churches has
been stated to be above forty-five thousand. In Domesday the
number enumerated is a little above seventeen hundred. No
doubt this enumeration is extremely imperfect. Very nearly
half of all the churches put down are found in Lincolnshire,
Norfolk, and Suffolk. The Register, in some cases, gives the
amount of land with which the church was endowed. Bosham,
in Sussex, the estate of Harold, had, in the time of King Edward,
a hundred and twelve hides of land. At the date of the survey it
had sixty-five hides. This was an enormous endowment. Some
churches had five acres only ; some fifty ; some a hundred. Some
are without land altogether. But, whether the endowment be
large or small, here is the evidence of a church planted upon the
same foundation as the monarchy, that of territorial possessions.

253

The politic ruler of England had, in the completion of
Domesday Book, possessed himself of the most perfect instru-
ment for the profitable administration of his government. He
was no longer working in the dark, whether he called out sol-
diers or levied taxes. He had carried through a great measure,
rapidly, and with a minuteness which puts to shame some of
our clumsy modern statistics. But the Conqueror did not want
his books for the gratification of official curiosity. He went to
work when he knew how many tenants-in-chief he could com-
mand, and how many men they could bring' into the field. He
instituted the great feudal principle of knight-service. His
ordinance is in these words: "We command that all earls,
barons, knights, sergeants, and freemen be always provided
with horses and arms as they ought, and that they be always
ready to perform to us their whole service, in manner as they
owe it to us of right for their fees and tenements, and as we have
appointed to them by the common council of our whole king-
dom, and as we have granted to them in fee with right of inheri-
tance."

These words, "in fee, with right of inheritance," leave no
doubt that the great vassals of the crown were absolute proprie-
tors, and that all their subvassals had the same right of holding
in perpetuity. The estate, however, reverted to the crown if
the race of the original feoffee became extinct, and hi cases, also,
of felony and treason. When Alain of Bretagne, who com-
manded the rear of the army at the battle of Hastings, and who
had received four hundred and forty-two manors, bowed before
the King at Salisbury, at the great council in 1085, and swore to
be true to him against all manner of men, he also brought with
him his principal land-sittende men (land-owners), who also
bowed before the King and became his men. They had pre-
viously taken the oath of fealty to Alain of Bretagne, and en-
gaged to perform all the customs and services due to him for
their lands and tenements. Alain, and his men, were proprie-
tors, but with very unequal rights. Alain, by his tenure, was
bound to provide for the King as many armed horsemen as the
vast extent of his estates demanded. But all those whom he
had enfeoffed, or made proprietors, upon his four hundred and
forty-two manors, were each bound to contribute a proportionate

254 COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK

number. When the free service of forty days was to be enforced,
the great earl had only to send round to his vassals, and the men
were at his command.

By this organization, which was universal throughout the
kingdom, sixty thousand cavalry could, with little delay, be
called into the field. Those who held by this military service
had their allotments divided into so many knights' fees, and
each knight's fee was to furnish one mounted and armed sol-
dier. The great vassals retained a portion of their land as their
demesnes, having tenants who paid rents and performed ser-
vices not military. But, under any circumstances, the vassal of
the crown was bound to perform his whole free service with men
and horses and arms. It is perfectly clear that this wonderful
organization rendered the whole system of government one great
confederacy, in which the small proprietors, tenants, and vil-
leins had not a chance of independence; and that their condi-
tion could only be ameliorated by those gradual changes which
result from a long intercourse between the strong and the weak,
in which power relaxes its severity and becomes protection.

In the ordinance in which the King commanded "free ser-
vice " he also says, "we will that all the freemen of the king-
dom possess their lands hi peace, free from all tallage and un-
just exaction." This, unhappily for the freemen, was little
more than a theory under the Norman kings. There were
various modes of making legal exaction the source of the gross-
est injustice. When the heir of an estate entered into posses-
sion he had to pay a "relief," or heriot, to the lord. This soon
became a source of oppression in the crown; and enormous
sums were exacted from the great vassals. The lord was not
more sparing of his men. He had another mode of extortion.
He demanded "aid" on many occasions, such as the marriage of
his eldest daughter, or when he made his eldest son a knight.
The estate of inheritance, which looks so generous and equitable
an arrangement, was a perpetual grievance; for the possessor
could neither transmit his property by will nor transfer it by
sale. The heir, however remote in blood, was the only legiti-
mate successor.

The feudal obligation to the lord was, in many other ways,
a fruitful source of tyranny, which lasted up to the time of the

COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK 255

Stuarts. If the heir were a minor, the lord entered into posses-
sion of the estate without any accountability. If it descended
to a female, the lord could compel her to marry according to
his will, or could prevent her marrying. During a long period
all these harassing obligations connected with property were
upheld. The crown and the nobles were equally interested in
their enforcement; and there can be little doubt that, though
the great vassals sometimes suffered under these feudal obliga-
tions to the king, the inferior tenants had a much greater amount
of oppression to endure at the hands of their immediate lords.
But if the freemen were oppressed in the tenure of their prop-
erty, we can scarcely expect that the landless man had not much
more to suffer. If he committed an offence in the Saxon time,
he paid a "mulct"; if in the Norman, he was subjected to an
amerciament. His whole personal estate was at the mercy of
the lord.

Having thus obtained a general notion of the system of
society established in less than twenty years after the Conquest,
we see that there was nothing wanting to complete the most
entire subjection of the great body of the nation. What had
been wanting was accomplished in the practical working out
of the theory that the entire land of the country belonged to the
King. It was now established that every tenant-in-chief should
do homage to the king; that every superior tenant should do
homage to his lord; that every villein should be the bondman
of the free; and that every slave should, without any property
however limited and insecure, be the absolute chattel of some
master. The whole system was connected with military service.
This was the feudal system. There was some resemblance to it
in parts of the Saxon organization; but under that organization
there was so much of freedom in the allodial or free tenure of
land that a great deal of other freedom Went with it. The
casting-off of the chains of feudality was the labor of six cen-
turies.

DECLINE OF THE MOORISH POWER IN

SPAIN

GROWTH AND DECAY OF THE ALMORAVIDE
AND ALMOHADE DYNASTIES

A.D. 1086-1214

S. A. DUNHAM

During the early part of the eleventh century the western caliphate,
which with its splendid capital of Cordova had flourished for almost
three hundred years, entered upon a decline that was the beginning of
its final dissolution. By A.D. 1020 the local governors openly asserted
their independence of Cordova and assumed the title of kings. Con-
spicuous among them was Mahomet ben Ismail ben Abid, the ivaliol
Seville.

While these petty rulers were determined to renounce allegiance to
Cordova, it was resolved at that capital to elect a sovereign to subdue
them and restore the ancient splendor of the empire. The choice fell
upon Gehwar ben Mahomet, who soon established a degree of tran-
quillity and commercial prosperity unknown for many years. But he
failed to reestablish the supremacy of Cordova, which capital Mahomet
of Seville was preparing to invade when he died. His son, Mahomet
Almoateded, having subdued Southern Andalusia, became the ally of Ma-
homet, son and successor of Gehwar on the throne of Cordova ; but he
betrayed the latter under pretence of aiding him against his enemies, and
usurped the sovereignty.

On the death of Mahomet Almoateded, his son Mahomet succeeded
him at Cordova. He was already King of Seville, and as he soon occu-
pied many other cities he became the most independent and powerful
sovereign of Mahometan Spain. His chief rival, Yahia Alkadia, King
of Toledo, was so contemptible to his people that they expelled him. He
appealed for aid to Alfonso VI, King of Leon (Alfonso of Castile); but
that Christian soldier was persuaded by Mahomet to oppose, instead of
assisting, Yahia. The latter was restored to his throne by the King of
Badajoz, but Alfonso invested Toledo and, after a three-years' siege,
reduced the city, in A.D. 1085. In the history of the events directly fol-
lowing the capitulation it is shown how costly to himself was the alli-
ance of Mahomet with Alfonso, and how it played its part in the coming

MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES 257

of his coreligionists from Africa to his assistance, and finally, as it
proved, to his own undoing and the supplanting of the power he repre-
sented in the Mahometan government of Spain.

PHE fall of Toledo, however it might have been foreseen by
the Mahometans, filled them with equal dismay and
indignation. As Mahomet was too formidable to be openly as-
sailed, they turned their vociferations of anger against his
hagib, whom they accused of betraying the faith of Islam.
Alarmed at the universal outcry, Mahomet was not sorry that
he could devolve the heavy load of responsibility on the shoul-
ders of his minister. The latter fled; but though he pro-
cured a temporary asylum from several princes, he was at
length seized by the emissaries of his offended master; was
brought, first to Cordova, next to Seville; confined within the
walls of a dungeon; and soon beheaded by the royal hand of
Mahomet. Thus was a servant of the King sacrificed for no
other reason than that he had served that King too well.

The conquest of Toledo was far from satisfying the ambi-
tion of Alfonso: he rapidly seized on the fortresses of Madrid,
Maqueda, Guadalaxara, and established his dominion on both
banks of the Tagus. Mahomet now began seriously to repent
his treaty with the Christian, and to tremble even for his own
possessions. He vainly endeavored to divert his ally from
the projects of aggrandizement which that ally had evidently
formed. The kings of Badajoz and Saragossa became tributa-
ries to the latter; nay, if any reliance is to be placed on either
Christian or Arabic historians,1 the King of Seville himself was

1 Conde* gives the translation of two letters — one from Alfonso to
Mahomet, distinguished for a tone of superiority and even of arrogance,
which could arise only from the confidence felt by the writer in his own
strength; the other from Mahomet to Alfonso, containing a defiance.
The latter begins :

" To the proud enemy of Allah, Alfonso ben Sancho, v/ho calls him-
self lord of both nations and both laws. May God confound his arro-
gance, and prosper those who walk in the right way ! "

One passage of the same letter says : " Fatigued with war, we were
willing to offer thee an annual tribute ; but this does not satisfy thee :
thou wishest us to deliver into thine hands our towns and fortresses ;
but are we thy subjects, that thou makest such demands, or hast thou
ever subdued us? Thine injustice has roused us from our lethargy," etc.
K., VOL. v.— 17.

258 MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES

subjected to the same humiliation. However this may have
been, Mahomet saw that unless he leagued himself with those
whose subjugation had hitherto been his constant object —
the princes of his faith — his and their destruction was inevi-
table. The magnitude of the danger compelled him to solicit
their alliance.

As the King of Saragossa was too much in fear of the Chris-
tians to enter into any league against them, and as the one of
Valencia (Yahia) reigned only at the pleasure of Alfonso, the
sovereigns of Badajoz, Almeria, and Granada were the only pow-
ers on whose cooperation he could calculate (he had annihilated
the authority of several petty kings). He invited those princes to
send their representatives to Seville, to consult as to the meas-
ures necessary to protect their threatened independence. The
invitation was readily accepted. On the day appointed, Ma-
homet, with his son Al Raxid and a considerable number of his
wazirs and cadis, was present at the deliberations. The dan-
ger was so imminent — the force of the Christians was so aug-
mented, and that of the Moslems so weakened — that such
resistance as Mahometan Spain alone could offer seemed hope-
less. With this conviction in their hearts, two of the most
influential cadis proposed an appeal to the celebrated African
conqueror, Yussef ben Taxfin, whose arm alone seemed able to
preserve the faith of Islam in the Peninsula.

The proposal was received with general applause by all
present : they did not make the very obvious reflection that when
a nation admits into its bosom an ally more powerful than
itself, it admits at the same time a conqueror. The wali of
Malaga alone, Abdallah ben Zagut, had courage to oppose the
dangerous embassy under consideration: "You mean to call
in the aid of the Almoravides! Are you ignorant that these
fierce inhabitants of the desert resemble their own native
tigers ? Suffer them not, I beseech you, to enter the fertile plains
of Andulasia and Granada! Doubtless they would break the
iron sceptre which Alfonso intends for us; but you would still
be doomed to wear the chains of slavery. Do you not know
that Yussef has taken all the cities of Almagreb; that he has
subdued the powerful tribes of the east and west; that he has
everywhere substituted despotism for liberty and independ«

MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES 259

ence?" The aged Zagut spoke in vain: he was even accused of
being a secret partisan of the Christian; and the embassy was
decreed.

But Zagat was not the only one who foresaw the catastrophe
to which that embassy must inevitably lead: Al Raxid shared
the same prophetic feeling. In reply to his father, who, after
the separation of the assembly, expatiated on the absolute
necessity of soliciting the alliance of Aben Taxfin as the only
measure capable of saving the rest of Mahometan Spain from
the yoke of Alfonso, he said: "This Aben Taxfin, who has sub-
dued all that he pleased, will serve us as he has already served
the people of Almagreb and Mauritania — he will expel us from
our country!"

"Anything," rejoined the father, "rather than Andalusia
should become the prey of the Christians! Dost thou wish the
Mussulmans to curse me? I would rather become an humble
shepherd, a driver of Yussef's camels, than reign dependent
on these Christian dogs! But my trust is in Allah."

"May Allah protect both thee and thy people!" replied Al
Raxid, mournfully, who saw that the die of fate was cast.

The course of this history must be interrupted for a moment,
while the origin and exploits of this formidable African are
recorded.

Beyond the chain of Mount Atlas, in the deserts of ancient
Getulia, dwelt two tribes of Arabian descent — both, probably,
of the greater one of Zanhaga, so illustrious in Arabian history.
At what time they had been expelled, or had voluntarily exiled
themselves, from their native Yemen, they knew not; but tradi-
tion taught them that they had been located in the African des-
erts from ages immemorial. Their life was passed under the
tent ; their only possessions were their camels and their freedom.
Yahia ben Ibrahim, belonging to one of these tribes — that of
Gudala — made the pilgrimage of Mecca. On his return through
the province of Cairwan he became acquainted with Abu-
Amram, a famous alfaqui, originally of Fez. Being questioned
by his new friend as to the religion and manners of his country-
men, he replied that they were sunk in ignorance, both from
their isolated situation in the desert and from their want of teach-
ers; he added, however, that they were strangers to cruelty, and

260 MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES

that they would be willing enough to receive instruction from
any quarter. He even entreated the alfaqui to allow some one
of his disciples to accompany him into his native country; but
none of those disciples was willing to undertake so long and
perilous a journey, and it was not without considerable diffi-
culty that Abdallah ben Yassim, the disciple of another alfaqui,
was persuaded to accompany the patriotic Yahia.

Abdallah was one of those ruling minds which, fortunately
for the peace of society, nature so seldom produces. Seeing his
enthusiastic reception by the tribe of Gudala, and the influence
he was sure of maintaining over it, he formed the design of
founding a sovereignty in the heart of these vast regions. Under
the pretext that to diffuse a holy religion and useful knowledge
was among the most imperative of duties, he prevailed on his
obedient disciples to make war on the kindred tribe of Lam-
tuna. That tribe submitted, acknowledging his spiritual au-
thority, and zealously assisted him in his great purpose of
gaining proselytes by the sword. His ambition naturally in-
creased with his success: in a short time he had reduced, in a
similar manner, the isolated tribes around him. To his valiant
followers of Lamtuna he now gave the name of Muraditins, or
Almoravides,1 which signifies men consecrated to the service of
God.

The whole country of Darah was gradually subdued by this
new apostle, and his authority was acknowledged over a region
extensive enough to form a respectable kingdom. But though
he exercised all the rights of sovereignty, he prudently abstained
from assuming the title: he left to the emir of Lamtuna the
ostensible exercise of temporal power; and when, in A.D. 1058,
that emir fell in battle, he nominated Abu-Bekr ben Omar to the
vacant dignity. His own death, which was that of a warrior,
left Abu-Bekr in possession of an undivided sovereignty. The
power and consequently the reputation of the emir, spread far
and wide, and numbers flocked from distant provinces to share
in the advantages of religion and plunder. His native plains
were now too narrow for the ambition of Abu-Bekr, who crossed

'This Moslem dynasty, founded about 1050, ruled in Africa, and
afterward in Spain, until 1147, when it was overthrown and succeeded
by that of the AlmohadeSo

MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES 261

the chain of Mount Atlas, and fixed his residence in the city of
Agmat, between those mountains and the sea.

But even this place was soon too confined for his increased
subjects, and he looked round for a site on which he might lay
the foundations of a great city, the destined metropolis of a great
empire. One was at length found; and the city of Morocco
began to rear its head from the valley of Eylana. Before, how-
ever, his great work was half completed, he received intelli-
gence that the tribe of Gudala had declared a deadly war
against that of Lamtuna; and that the ruin of one at least of
the hostile people was to be apprehended. As he belonged to
the latter, he naturally trembled for the fate of his kindred; and
at the head of his cavalry he departed for his native deserts,
leaving the superintendence of the buildings and the command
of the army, during his absence, to his cousin, Yussef ben Taxfin.

The person and character of Yussef are drawn in the most
favorable colors by the Arabian writers. We are told that his
stature was tall and noble, his countenance prepossessing, his
eye dark and piercing, his beard long, his tone of voice harmo-
nious, his whole frame, which no sickness ever assailed, strong,
robust, and familiar with fatigue; that his mind corresponded
with his outward appearance, his generosity, his care of the
poor, his sobriety, his justice, his religious zeal, yet freedom
from intolerance, rendering him the admiration of foreigners
and the love of his own people. But whatever were his other
virtues, it will be seen that gratitude, honor, and good faith
were not among the number. Scarcely had his kinsman left
the city, than, in pursuance of the design he had formed of usurp-
ing the supreme authority, he began to win the affection of the
troops, partly by his gifts and partly by that winning affability
of manner which he could easily assume. How well he suc-
ceeded will soon appear. Nor was his success in war less agree-
able to so fierce and martial a people as the Almoravides.
The Berbers who inhabited the defiles of Mount Atlas, and
who, animated by the spirit of independence so characteristic
of mountaineers, endeavored to vindicate their natural liberty,
were quickly subdued by him.

But his policy was still superior. He had long loved, or at
least long aspired to the hope of marrying, the beautiful Zainab,

262 MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES

sister of Abu-Bekr; but the fear of a repulse from the proud
chief of his family had caused him to smother his inclination.
He now disdained to supplicate for that chief's consent: he
married the lady, and from that moment proceeded boldly in
his projects of ambition. Having put the finishing touch to
his magnificent city of Morocco, he transferred thither the seat
of his empire; and by the encouragement he afforded to indi-
viduals of all nations who chose to settle there, he soon filled it
with a prosperous and numerous population. The augmenta-
tion of his army was his next great object; and so well did he
succeed in it that on his departure, in a hostile expedition
against Fez, he found his troops exceeded one hundred thousand.
With so formidable a force, he had little difficulty in rapidly
extending his conquests.

Yussef had just completed the subjugation of Fez when Abu-
Bekr returned from the desert and encamped in the vicinity
of Agmat. He was soon made acquainted — probably common
report had acquainted him long before — with the usurpation
of his kinsman. With a force so far inferior to his rival's, and
still more with the conviction that the hearts of the people were
weaned from him, he might well hesitate as to the course he
should adopt. His greatest mortification was to hear his own
horsemen, whom curiosity drew into Morocco, loud in the
praises of Yussef, whose liberality to the army was the theme
of universal admiration, and whose service for that reason
many avowed their intention of embracing. He now feared that
his power was at an end, yet he resolved to have an interview
with his cousin.

The two chiefs met about half-way between Morocco and
Agmat,1 and after a formal salutation took their seats on the
same carpet. The appearance of Yussef's formidable guard,
the alacrity with which he was obeyed, and the grandeur which
surrounded him convinced Abu-Bekr that the throne of the
usurper was too firmly established to be shaken. The poor
emir, so far from demanding the restitution of his rights, durst
not even utter one word of complaint ; on the contrary, he pre-
tended that he had long renounced empire, and that his only
wish was to pass the remainder of his days in the retirement of
1 The distance is about ten or twelve leagues.

MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES 263

the desert. With equal hypocrisy Yussef humbly thanked him
for his abdication; the sheiks and walis were summoned to
witness the renewed declaration of the emir, after which the
two princes separated. The following day, however, Abu-
Bekr received a magnificent present from Yussef,1 who, in-
deed, continued to send him one every year to the period of his
death.

Yussef, who, though he had refused to receive the title of
almumenin, which he considered as properly belonging to the
Caliph of the East, had just exchanged his humble one of emir
for those of almuzlemin, or prince of the believers, and of
nazaradin, or defender of the faith, when the letters of Ma-
homet reached him. A similar application from Omar, King
of Badajoz, he had disregarded, not because he was indifferent
to the glory of serving his religion, still less to the advantage of
extending his conquests, but because he had not then suffi-
ciently consolidated his power. Now, however, he was in peace-
ful possession of an extended empire, and he assembled his
chiefs to hear their sentiments on an expedition which he had
resolved to undertake. All immediately exclaimed that war
should be undertaken in defence of the tottering throne of Is-
lam. Before, however, he returned a final answer to the King
of Seville, he insisted that the fortress of Algeziras should be
placed in his hands, on the pretence that if fortune were un-
propitious he should have some place to which he might re-
treat. That Mahomet should have been so blind as to not
perceive the designs involved in the insidious proposal is almost
enough to make one agree with the Arabic historians that des-
tiny had decreed he should fall by his own measures. The place
was not only surrendered to the artful Moor, but Mahomet
himself went to Morocco to hasten the departure of Yussef.

1 This present is made to consist of twenty -five thousand crowns of
gold, seventy horses of the best breed, all splendidly accoutred, one hun-
dred and fifty mules, one hundred magnificent turbans with as many
costly habits, four hundred common turbans, two hundred white mantles,
one thousand pieces of rich stuffs, two hundred pieces of fine linen, one
hundred and fifty black slaves, twenty beautiful young maidens, with a
considerable quantity of perfumes, corn, and cattle. Such a gift was
worthy of royalty. In a similar situation a modern English sovereign
would probably have sent — one hundred pounds.

264 MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES

He was assured of speedy succor and induced to return. He
was soon followed by the ambitious African, at the head of a
mighty armament.

Alfonso was besieging Saragossa, which he had every
expectation of reducing, when intelligence reached him of
Yussef's disembarkation. He resolved to meet the approach-
ing storm. At the head of all the forces he could muster he
advanced toward Andalusia, and encountered Yussef on the
plains of Zalaca, between Badajoz and Merida. As the latter
was a strict observer of the outward forms of his religion, he
summoned the Christian King by letter to embrace the faith of
the Prophet or consent to pay an annual tribute or prepare for
immediate battle. "I am told," added the writer, "that thou
wishest for vessels to carry the war into my kingdom; I spare
thee the trouble of the voyage. Allah brings thee into my
presence that I may punish thy presumption and pride!"
The indignant Christian trampled the letter under foot, and at
the same time said to the messenger: "Tell thy master what
thou hast seen! Tell him also not to hide himself during the
action: let him meet me face to face!" The two armies en-
gaged the i3th day of the moon Regeb, A.H. 479.*

The onset of Alfonso at the head of the Christian cavalry
was so fierce that the ranks of the Almoravides were thrown
into confusion; not less successful was Sancho, King of Navarre,
against the Andalusians, who retreated toward Badajoz. But
the troops of Seville kept the field, and fought with desperate
valor: they would, however, have given way, had not Yussef
at this critical moment advanced with his reserve and his own
guard, consisting of his bravest troops, and assailed the Chris-
tians in the rear and flanks. This unexpected movement de-
cided the fortune of the day. Alfonso was severely wounded
and compelled to retreat, but not until nightfall, nor until he
had displayed a valor worthy of the greatest heroes. Though
his own loss was severe, amounting, according to the Arabians,
to twenty-four thousand men, that of the enemy could scarcely
be inferior, when we consider that this victory had no result:
Yussef was evidently too much weakened to profit by it.

Not long after the battle, Yussef being called to Africa by
1 October 23, A.D. 1086.

MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES 265

the death of a son, the command of the Almoravides devolved
on Syr ben Abu-Bekr, the ablest of his generals. That general
advanced northward, and seized some insignificant fortresses;
but the advantage was but temporary, and was more than
counterbalanced by the disasters of the following year. The
King of Saragossa, Abu-Giafar, had. hoped that the defeat of
Zalaca would prevent the Christians from attacking him; but
that of his allies, the Mahometan princes, in the neighborhood,
and the taking of Huesca by the King of Navarre, convinced
him how fallacious was his fancied security. Seeing that no
advantage whatever had accrued from his former expedition,
Yussef now proclaimed the Alhiged, or holy war, and invited
all the Andalusian princes to join him. In A.D. 1088, he again
disembarked at Algeziras and joined the confederates. But
this present demonstration of force proved as useless as the
preceding: it ended in nothing; owing partly to the dissensions
of Mahometans, and partly to the activity of the Christians,
who not only rendered abortive the measures of the enemy, but
gained some signal advantages over them. Yussef was forced
to retreat on Almeida. Whether through the distrust of the
Mahometan princes, who appear to have penetrated his inten-
tion of subjecting them to his empire, or through his apprehen-
sion of Alfonso, he again returned to Africa, to procure new and
more considerable levies. In A.D. 1091 he landed a third tune
at Algeziras, not so much with the view of humbling the Chris-
tian King as of executing the perfidious design he had so long
harbored. For form's sake, indeed, he invested Toledo, but
he could have entertained no expectation of reducing it; and
when he perceived that the Andalusian princes refused to join
him, he eagerly left that city, and proceeded to secure far
dearer and easier interests: he openly threw off the mask, and
commenced his career of spoliation.

The King of Granada, Abdallah ben Balkin, was the first
victim to African perfidy. In the conviction that he must be
overwhelmed if resistance were offered, he left his city to wel-
come Yussef. His submission was vain : he was instantly loaded
with chains, and with his family sent to Agmat. Timur ben
Balkin, brother of Abdallah, was in the same violent manner
despoiled of Malaga. Mahomet now perceived the grievous

266 MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES

error which he had committed, and the prudent foresight of his
son Al Raxid. "Did not I tell thee," said the latter, mourn-
fully, "what the consequences would be; that we should be
driven from our palace and country?"

"Thou wert indeed a true prophet," replied the self-ac-
cused father; "but what power could avert the decrees of
fate?"

It seemed as if fate had indeed resolved that this well-
meaning but misguided prince should fall by his own obstinacy;
for though his son advised him to seek the alliance of Alfonso,
he refused to do so until that alliance could no longer avail him.
He himself seemed to think that the knell of his departing great-
ness was about to sound; and the most melancholy images were
present to his fancy, even in sleep. " One night," says an Arabic
historian, " he heard in a dream his ruin predicted by one of his
sons: he awoke, and the same verses were repeated:

" ' Once, Fortune carried thee in her car of triumph and thy
name was by renown spread to the ends of the earth. Now,
the same renown conveys only thy sighs. Days and nights pass
away, and like them the enjoyments of the world; thy greatness
has vanished like a dream!' '

But if Mahomet was superstitious — if he felt that fate had
doomed him, and that resistance would be useless — he resolved
not to fall ignobly. His defence was indeed heroic; but it was
vain, even though Alfonso sent him an aid of twenty thousand
men: his cities fell one by one; Seville was constrained to
capitulate: he and his family were thrown into prison until a
ship was prepared to convey them into Africa, whither their
perfidious ally had retired some weeks before. His conduct
in this melancholy reverse of fortune is represented as truly
great. Not a sigh escaped him, except for the innocent com-
panions of his misfortune, especially for his son, Al Raxid,
whose virtues and talents deserved a better destiny. Sur-
rounded by the best beloved of his wives, by his daughters, and
his four surviving sons, he endeavored to console them as they
wept on seeing his royal hands oppressed with fetters, and still
more when the ship conveyed all from the shores of Spain.
"My children and friends," said the suffering monarch, "let
us learn to support our lot with resignation! In this state of

MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES 267

being our enjoyments are but lent us, to be resumed when
heaven sees fit. Joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, closely
follow each other; but the noble heart is above the incon-
stancy of fortune!"

The royal party disembarked at Ceuta, and were conveyed
to Agmat, to be confined in a fortress. We are told that on their
journey a compassionate poet presented the fallen King with a
copy of verses deploring his misfortunes, and that he rewarded
the poet with thirty-six pieces of gold — the only money he had
left, from his once exhaustless riches. He had little apprehen-
sion of what was to follow — that Yussef would leave him with-
out support; that his future life was to be passed in penury;
nay, that his daughters would be compelled to earn his sub-
sistence and their own by the labor of their hands. Yet even
in that indigent condition, says Aben Lebuna, and through the
sadness which covered their countenances, there was something
about them which revealed their high origin. The unfortunate
monarch outlived the loss of his crown and liberty about four
years.

After the fall of Mahomet, the general of Yussef had little
difficulty in subduing the princes of Andalusia. Valencia next
received the African yoke. The King of Saragossa was more
fortunate. He sent ambassadors to Yussef, bearing rich pres-
ents, and proposing an alliance with a common league against
the Christians. "My dominions," said Abu-Giafar, "are the
only barrier between thee and the Christian princes. Hitherto
my predecessors and myself have withstood all their efforts;
with thy succor I shall fear them still less." Yussef accepted
the proposal; a treaty of alliance was made; and the army of
Abu-Giafar was reinforced by a considerable body of Amora-
vides, A.H. 486, with whom he repelled an invasion of Sancho,
King of Aragon. A third division of the Africans, which
marched to destroy the sovereignty of Algarve and Badajoz,
was no less successful. Badajoz capitulated; but, in violation of
the treaty, the dethroned Omar, with two of his sons, was sur-
rounded and assassinated by a body of cavalry, as he was un-
suspiciously journeying from the scene of his past prosperity in
search of another asylum. A third son was placed in close con-
finement

268 MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES

Thus ended the petty kingdoms of Andalusia, after a stormy
existence of about sixty years.

For some years after the usurpation of Yussef, peace ap-
pears to have existed in Spain between the Mahometans and
the Christians. Fearing a new irruption of Africans, Alfonso
contented himself with fortifying Toledo; and Yussef felt little
inclination to renew the war with one whose prowess he had so
fatally experienced. But Christian Spain was, at one moment,
near the brink of ruin. The passion for the crusades was no
less ardently felt by the Spaniards than by other nations of
Europe; thousands of the best warriors were preparing to
depart for the Holy Land, as if there were more merit in con-
tending with the infidels, in a remote region, for a barren sepul-
chre, than at home for the dearest interests of man — for honor,
patriotism, and religion. Fortunately for Spain, Pope Pascal
II, in answer to the representations of Alfonso, declared that
the proper post of every Spaniard was at home, and there were
his true enemies. Soon afterward Yussef returned to Morocco,
where he died on the 3d day of the moon Muharram, A.H.
500, after living one hundred Arabian or about ninety-seven
Christian years.

In A.H. 514 the empire of the Almoravides was tottering to
its fall. It had never been agreeable to the Mahometans of
Spain, whose manners, from their intercourse with a civilized
people, were comparatively refined. The sheiks of Lamtuna
were so many insupportable tyrants; the Jews, the universal
agents for the collection of the revenues, were here, as in Po-
land, the most pitiless extortioners; every savage from the
desert looked with contempt on the milder inhabitant of the
Peninsula. The domination of these strangers was indeed so
odious that, except for the divisions between Alfonso and his
ambitious queen Donna Urraca, who was sovereign in her own
right, all Andalusia might speedily have been subjected to
Christian rule. Alfonso, the King of Aragon, fell at the siege
of Fraga about A.D. 1109, but the Almoravides met an equally
valiant foe in his son and successor, Alfonso Raymond, King of
Leon and Castile.

After a period of about forty years, during which the
Christians were steadily increasing their dominions, Coria and

MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES 269

Mora and other Mahometan strongholds were acquired by
Alfonso, now styled the "Emperor"; and almost every con-
test between the two natural enemies had turned to the advan-
tage of the Christians. So long, indeed, as fhe walis were eager
only to preserve or to extend their authority, independent of
each other and of every superior, this success need not surprise
us — we may rather be surprised that the Mahometans were
allowed to retain any footing in the Peninsula. Probably they
would at this time have been driven from it but for the season-
able arrival of the victorious Almohades. Both Christians and
Africans now contended for the superiority. While the troops
of Alfonso reduced Baeza, and, with a Mahometan ally, even
Cordova, Malaga, and Seville acknowledged Abu Amram ; Cala-
trava and Almeria next fell to the Christian Emperor, about the
same time that Lisbon and the neighboring towns received Don
Enrique, the new sovereign of Portugal. Most of these con-
quests, however, were subsequently recovered by the Almo-
hades. Being reinforced by a new army from Africa, the latter
pursued their successes with greater vigor. They reduced
Cordova, which was held by an ally of Alfonso; defeated, and
forever paralyzed, the expiring efforts of the Almoravides;
and proclaimed their Emperor Abdelmumen as sovereign of
all Mahometan Spain.

Notwithstanding the destructive wars which had prevailed
for nearly a century, neither Moors nor Christians had acquired
much advantage by them. From the reduction of Saragossa to
the present time, the victory, indeed, had generally declared for
the Christians; but their conquests, with the exception of
Lisbon and a few fortresses in Central Spain, were lost almost
as soon as gamed; and the same fate attended the equally
transient successes of the Mahometans. The reasons why the
former did not permanently extend their territories, were their
internal dissensions; while Leon was at war with Castile, or
Castile with Leon, or either with Aragon, we need not wonder
that the united Almoravides, or their successors the Almohades,
should sometimes triumph; but those triumphs were sure to be
followed by reverses whenever not all, but any one, of the Chris-
tian states was at liberty to assail its natural enemy. The
Christians, when at peace among themselves, were always too

270 MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES

many for their Mahometan neighbors, even when the latter
were aided by the whole power of Western Africa.

In A.H. 572 (about A.D. 1179) the King of Castile reduced
Caenza, and the Moors were defeated before Toledo. The fol-
lowing year the Portuguese were no less successful before
Abrantes, which the Africans had besieged. These disasters
roused the wrath of Yussef abu Yagur (son and successor of
Abdulmumen who died A.H. 558 = A.D. 1165); but as an
obscure rebellion required his presence at that time in Mauri-
tania, he did not land in Spain until A.H. 580. He marched
without delay against Santarem, which his soldiers had vainly
besieged some years before. Wishing to divide the Portuguese
force, he one night sent an order to his son Cid Abu Ishac, who
lay encamped near him, to march with the Andalusian cavalry
on Lisbon. The officer who carried the order instead of Lisbon
named Seville; the whole Moslem army were sure that some
disaster was impending, and that the siege was to be raised;
before morning the camp was deserted, the guard alone of
Yussef remaining. While he despatched orders to recall the
alarmed fugitives, the Christians, who were soon aware of the
retreat, issued from the walls, surrounded and massacred the
guard. Yussef defended himself like a hero: six of the advan-
cing assailants he laid low, before the same fate was inflicted on
himself. The merciless carnage of the Christians spared not
even his female attendants. At this moment two companies of
cavalry arrived, and, finding their monarch dying, furiously
charged the Christians, whom they soon put to flight. In a few
hours the whole army returned, and, inspired with the same
hope of vengeance, they stormed and took the place, and put
every living creature to the sword.

Yacub ben Yussef, from his victories afterward named
Almansor, who was then in Spain, was immediately declared
successor to his father. For some years he was not personally
opposed to the Christians, though his walis carried on a desul-
tory indecisive war; he was long detained in Africa, first in
quelling some domestic commotions, and afterward by severe
illness. He was scarcely recovered, when the intelligence that
the Christians were making insulting irruptions to the very
outworks of Algeziras made him resolve on punishing their

MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES 271

audacity. His preparations were of the most formidable de-
scription. In A.H. 591 he landed in Andalusia, and proceeded
toward Valencia, where the Christian army then lay. There
Alfonso VIII, King of Castile, was awaiting the expected rein-
forcements from his allies, the kings of Leon and Navarre.
Both armies pitched their tents on the plains of Alarcon. The
following day the Christians commenced the attack, and with
so much impetuosity that the centre was soon broken. But an
Andalusian chief conducted a strong body of his men against
Alfonso, who with the reserve occupied the hill above the plain.
While the struggle was in all its fury, Yacub and his division
took the Christians in flank. The result was fatal to the Castilian
army, which, discouraged at what it considered a new enemy,
gave way in every direction. Alfonso, preferring an honorable
death to the shame of defeat, prepared to plunge into the heart
of the Mahometan squadrons, when his nobles surrounded him
and forced him from the field. His loss must have been immense,
amounting probably to twenty thousand men. With a gener-
osity very rare in a Mahometan, and still more in an African,
Yacub restored his prisoners to liberty — an action for which,
we are informed, he received few thanks from his followers.
Alfonso retreated to Toledo just as the King of Leon arrived
with the promised reinforcement.

After this signal victory Yacub rapidly reduced Calatrava,
Guadalaxara, Madrid and Esalona, Salamanca, etc. Toledo,
too, he invested, but in vain. He returned to Africa, caused
his son Mahomet to be declared wall alhadi, and died,
the 22d day of the moon Regeb, A.H. 595.* He left behind
him the character of an able, a valiant, a liberal, a just, and
even magnanimous prince — of one who labored more for the
real welfare of his people than any other potentate of his
age. He was, beyond doubt, the greatest and best of the Almo-
hades.

The character of Mahomet Abu Abdallah, surnamed Al-
nassir, was very different from that of his great father. Ab-
sorbed in effeminate pleasures, he paid little attention to the
internal administration of his empire or to the welfare of his
people. Yet he was not insensible to martial fame; and he
1 May 19, 1199.

272 MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES

accordingly showed no indisposition to forsake his harem for
the field. After quelling two inconsiderable rebellions, he pre-
pared to punish the audacity of Alfonso of Castile, who made
destructive inroads into Andalusia. Much as the world had
been astounded at the preparations of his grandfather Yussef,
they were not surpassed by his own, if, as we are credibly in-
formed, one alone of the five divisions of his army amounted to
one hundred and sixty thousand men. It is certain that a year
was required for the assembling of this vast armament, that two
months were necessary to convey it across the straits, and that
all Christian Europe was filled with alarm at its disembarka-
tion. Innocent III proclaimed a crusade to Spain; and Rod-
rigo of Toledo, the celebrated historian, accompanied by several
prelates, went from one court to another, to rouse the Christian
princes. While the kings of Aragon and Navarre l promised to
unite their forces with their brother of Castile to repel the com-
mon danger, great numbers of volunteers from Portugal2 and
Southern France hastened to the general rendezvous at Toledo,
the Pope ordered fasting, prayers, and processions to be made,
to propitiate the favor of heaven, and to avert from Christen-
dom the greatest danger that had threatened it since the days
of the emir Abderahman.

Mahomet opened the campaign of A.H. 608 by the siege of
Salvatierra, a strong but not important fortress of Estremadura,
defended by the knights of Calatrava. That he should waste
his forces on objects so incommensurate with their extent proves
how little he was qualified to wield them. The place stood out
for several months, and did not surrender until the Emperor
had sustained a heavy loss, nor until the season was too far
advanced to permit any advantage to be derived from this
partial success. By suspending the execution of his great design

1 Sancho, King of Navarre, is justly accused of backwardness at least
in joining the Christian alliance. He even sought that of Yacub and
Mahomet, on condition that his own states should be spared, or per-
haps amplified at the expense of his neighbors. If the Arabian writers
are correct, he privately waited on Mahomet in Seville ; but the result
of the interview is unknown.

2 The King of Portugal was not present in this campaign, confidently
as the contrary has been asserted by most historians. — La CUde : His-
toire GttUrale de Portugal, ii.

MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES 273

until the following season, he allowed Alfonso time to prepare
for the contest. The following June, the kings of Leon and
Castile having assembled at Toledo, and been joined by a
considerable number of foreign volunteers, the Christian army
advanced toward the south. That of the infidels lay in the
neighborhood of Baeza, and extended to the Sierra Morena.

On July 1 2th, A.H. 608, the crusaders reached the moun-
tainous chain which divides New Castile from Andalusia. They
found not only the passes, but the summits of the mountains,
occupied by the Almohades. To force a passage was impos-
sible; and they even deliberated on retreating, so as to draw
out, if possible, the enemy from positions so formidable, when
a shepherd entered the camp of Alfonso and proposed to con-
duct the Christian army, by a path unknown to both armies, to
the summit of this elevated chain — by a path, too, which would
be invisible to the enemy's outposts. A few companies having
accompanied the man and found him equally faithful and well
informed, the whole army silently ascended and intrenched
themselves on the summit, the level of which was extensive
enough to contain them all. Below appeared the wide-spread
tents of the Moslems, whose surprise was great on perceiving
the heights thus occupied by the crusaders. For two days the
latter, whose fatigues had been harassing, kept their position;
but on the third day they descended into the plains of Tolosa,
which were about to be immortalized by their valor. Their right
wing was led by the King of Navarre, their left by the King of
Aragon, while Alfonso took his station in the centre. Mahomet
had drawn up his army in a similar manner; but, with a strong
body of reserve, he occupied an elevation well defended besides
by vast iron chains, which surrounded his impenetrable guard.1
In one hand he held a useless scimitar, in the other the Koran.
The attack was made by the Christian centre against that of the
Mahometans; and immediately the two wings moved against
those of the enemy. The African centre, which consisted of
the one hundred and sixty thousand volunteers, made a de-
termined stand; and though it was broken, it soon rallied, on
being reinforced from the reserve. At one time, indeed, the

1 These chains are not mentioned by the Arabs ; but what can be
expected from their brevity ?
E. VOL. v. — 18.

274 MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES

superiority of numbers was so great on the part of the Moslems
that the troops of Alfonso appeared about to give way. At this
moment that King, addressing the archbishop Rodrigo, who
was with him, said, "Let us die here, prelate!" and he pre-
pared to rush amid the dense ranks of the enemy. The prelate,
however, and a Castilian general, retained him by the bridle of
his horse, representing the rashness of his purpose, and advising
him to reinforce his weak points by new succors. Accordingly
those succors, among which were the vassals with the pennon
of the archbishop, advanced to support the sinking Castilians.
This manoeuvre decided the fortune of the day.1 The Ma-
hometan centre, after a sharp conflict, was again broken, this
time irretrievably, and a way opened to the intrenchments of
the Emperor. Seeing the success of their allies, the two wings
charged their opponents with double fury and triumphed like-
wise. But the Africans * rallied round Mahomet, and pre-
sented a mass deep and formidable to the conquerors. Rodrigo,
with his brother prelate, the Archbishop of Narbonne, now
incited the Christians to overcome this last obstacle: both in-
trepidly accompanied the van of the centre. The struggle was
terrific, but short; myriads of the barbarians fell; the boundary
was first broken down by the King of Navarre; the Castilians
and Aragonese followed; all opponents were massacred or fled;
and the victors began to ascend the eminence on which Ma-
homet still remained. Seeing the total destruction or flight of
his vast host, the Emperor sorrowfully exclaimed, "Allah alone
is just and powerful; the devil is false and wicked!" Scarcely
had he uttered the truism, when an Alarab approached, lead-
ing by the hand a strong but nimble mule. "Prince of the
faithful!" said the African, "how long wilt thou remain here?
Dost thou not perceive that thy Moslems flee ? The will of Allah
be done! Mount this mule, which is fleeter than the bird of
heaven, or even the arrow which strikes it; never yet did she
fail her rider; away! for on thy safety depends that of us all!"
Mahomet mounted the beast, while the Alarab ascended the

1 The standard-bearer of Rodrigo, don Domingo Pasquel, canon of
Toledo, showed that he was well fitted to serve the church militant ; he
twice carried his banner through the heart of the Mahometan forces.

'' The Arabian account says that the Andalusians were the first to flee.

MOORS' POWER IN SPAIN DECLINES 275

Emperor's horse, and both soon outstripped not only the pur-
suers but the fugitives. The carnage of the latter was dread-
ful until darkness put an end to it. The victors now occupied
the tents of the Mahometans, while the two martial prelates
sounded the Te Deum for the most splendid success which
had shone on the banners of the Christians since the time of
Charles Martel. The loss of the Africans, even according to
the Arabian writers, who admit that the centre was wholly
destroyed, could not fall short of one hundred and sixty thousand
men.1

The reduction of several towns, from Tolosa to Baeza, im-
mediately followed this glorious victory — a victory in which
Don Alfonso nobly redeemed his failure in the field of Zalaca —
and which, in its immediate consequences, involved the ruin of
the Mahometan empire in Spain. After an unsuccessful at-
tempt on Ubeda, as the hot season was raging, the allies returned
to Toledo, satisfied that the power of Mahomet was forever
broken. That Emperor, indeed, did not long survive his dis-
aster. Having precipitately fled to Morocco, he abandoned
himself to licentious pleasures, left the cares of government to
his son, or rather his ministers, and died on the zoth day of the
moon Shaffan, A.H. 610 (A.D. 1214), not without suspicion of
poison.

1 Of this great battle we have an account by four eye-witnesses : i.
By King Alfonso, in a letter to the Pope; 2, by the historian Rodrigo of
Toledo ; 3, by Arnaud, Archbishop of Narbonne ; 4, by the author of
the Annals of Toledo.

By recent writers of Spain the number of slain on the part of the
Africans was two hundred thousand ; on that of the Christians, twenty-
five individuals only. Of course the whole campaign is represented as
miraculous; and, indeed, actual miracles are recorded — which we have
neither space nor inclination to notice.

THE FIRST CRUSADE

A.D. 1096-1099

SIR GEORGE W. COX

Religious feeling in the eleventh century rose to a great pitch of
enthusiasm, and led men of various nations, with still more various mo-
tives and aims in worldly affairs, to pursue one common end with their
whole heart. Between the years 1096 and 1270 these attempts of Chris-
tian nations to rescue the Holy Land from the " Infidels," as the Mahome-
tans were called, added a wholly new character of human enterprise to
the world's history.

At the time — in the middle of the eleventh century — when the Seljuks,
a Turkish tribe of Western Asia, had overrun Syria and Asia Minor,
throwing the East into a state of anarchy, Europe was beginning to
adopt modes of settled order. Through the Byzantine empire great
numbers of pilgrims for centuries had passed to visit Palestine. With
the improved condition of the western nations, which led to an extension
of commerce in the East, the pilgrimage to that part of the world ac-
quired a new importance. As early as 1064 a caravan of seven thousand
pilgrims made their way to the neighborhood of Jerusalem, where they
narrowly escaped destruction by the Bedouins, their rescue being effected
by a Saracen emir.

In 1070 the Seljuks took possession of Jerusalem, inflicting hardships
on the pilgrims by intolerable exactions, insult, and plunder. Besides
outraging Christian sentiment, they ruined the commerce of the western
nations. Throughout Europe arose the cry for vengeance, and men's
minds were fully prepared for an attempt to conquer Palestine when
their leaders began to preach the sacred duty of delivering the Holy
Sepulchre from the hands of the infidels.

At the Council of Clermont, in 1094, Pope Urban II depicted the mis-
eries of Christians in Palestine, and, with a power of eloquence unsur-
passed in his day, called upon those who heard him to wipe off from the
face of the earth the impurities which caused them, and to lift their op-
pressed fellow-Christians from the depths into which they had been
trampled. He urged them to take up arms in the service of the Cross,
at the same time setting before them the temporal, no less than the spir-
itual, advantages that would accrue from the conquest of a land " flowing
with milk and honey," and which, he said, should be divided among
them. He likewise offered them full pardon for all their sins.

The enthusiasm of his hearers burst all bounds, and with one voice

276

THE FIRST CRUSADE 277

they cried : " God wills it ! God wills it ! * To all parts of Europe the
fervor spread. The Pope was powerfully aided by an earnest and elo-
quent— if ignorant — monk, Peter the Hermit, of Amiens, who declared
that he would rouse the martial spirit of Europe in the cause, and he
himself was the first — with whatsoever of misguided zeal — to lead the
way to the Holy Land.

The crusades are so called from the simple circumstance that the
badge chosen for the movement was the cross, which Pope Urban bade
the Christian warriors wear on their breasts or on their shoulders, as the
sign of Him who died for the salvation of their souls, and as the pledge
of a vow that could never be recalled.

IN the enterprise to which Latin Christendom stood com-
mitted, the several nations or countries of Europe took equal
parts; or, rather, no nation, as such, took any part in it at
all; and in this fact we have the explanation of that want of co-
herent action, and even decent or average generalship, which
is commonly seen in national undertakings. For the crusade
there was no attempt at a commissariat, no care for a base of
supplies; and the crusading hosts were a collection of individual
adventurers who either went without making any provisions
for their journey or provided for their own needs and those of
their followers from their own resources. The number of these
adventurers was naturally determined by the political condi-
tions of the country from which they came. In Italy the strug-
gle between the pope and the antipope went far toward chill-
ing enthusiasm; and the recruits for the crusading army came
chiefly from the Normans who had followed Robert Guiscard
to the sunny southern lands. The Spaniards were busied with
a crusade nearer home, and were already pushing back to the
south the Mahometan dominion which had once threatened
to pass the barriers of the Pyrenees and carry the Crescent to
the shores of the Baltic Sea. About ten years before the council
of Clermont the Moslem dynasty of Toledo had been expelled
by Alfonso, King of Galicia: the kingdom of Cordova had
fallen twenty years earlier (1065), and while Peter the Hermit
was hurrying hither and thither through the countries of North-
ern Europe, the Christians of Spain were winning victories in
Murcia, and the land was ringing with the exploits of the
dauntless Cid, Ruy Diaz de Bivar. By the Germans the sum-
mons to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre was received with

278 THE FIRST CRUSADE

comparative coldness; the partisans of emperors, who had been
humbled to the dust by the predecessors of Urban, if not by
himself, were not vehemently eager to obey it. The bishops of
Salzburg, Passau, and Strasburg, the aged duke Guelph of
Bavaria, had undertaken the toilsome and perilous jrarney:
not one of them saw their homes again, and their death in the
distant East was not regarded by their countrymen as an en-
couragement to follow their example. In England the English
were too much weighed down by the miseries of the Conquest,
the Normans too much occupied in strengthening their position,
and the King, William the Red, more ready to take advantage
of the needs of his brother Robert than to incur any risks of
his own. The great movement came from the lands extending
from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees. Franks and Normans alike
made ready with impetuous haste for the great adventure; and
tens of thousands, who could not wait for the formation of some-
thing like a regular army, hurried away, under leaders as fran-
tic as themselves, to their inevitable doom.

Little more than half the time allowed for the gathering of
the crusaders had passed away, when a crowd of some sixty
thousand men and women, neither caring nor thinking about
the means by which their ends could be attained, insisted that
the hermit Peter should lead them at once to the Holy City.
Mere charity may justify the belief that some even among these
may have been folk of decent lives moved by the earnest con-
viction that their going to Jerusalem would do some good;
that the vast majority looked upon their vow as a license for
the commission of any sin, there can be no moral doubt; that
they exhibited not a single quality needed for the successful
prosecution of their enterprise is absolutely certain. With a
foolhardiness equal to his ignorance Peter undertook the task,
in which he was aided by Walter the Penniless, a man with some
pretensions to the soldier-like character. But the utter disorder
of this motley host made it impossible for them to journey long
together. At Cologne they parted company; and fifteen thou-
sand under the penniless Walter made their way to the frontiers
of Hungary, while Peter led onward a host which swelled grad-
ually on the march to about forty thousand.

Another army or horde of perhaps twenty thousand marched

THE FIRST CRUSADE 279

under the guidance of Emico, Count of Leiningen, a third under
that of the monk Gottschalk, a man not notorious for the purity
or disinterestedness of his motives. Behind these came a
rabble, it is said, of two hundred thousand men, women, and
children, preceded by a goose and a goat, or, as some have sup-
posed, by banners on which, as symbols of the mysterious faith
of Gnostics and Paulicians, the likeness of these animals was
painted. In this vile horde no pretence was kept up of order or
of decency. Sinning freely, it would seem, that grace might
abound, they plundered and harried the lands through which
they marched, while three thousand horsemen, headed by some
counts and gentlemen, were not too dignified to act as their
attendants and to share their spoil.

But if they had no scruple in robbing Christians, their
delight was to prove the reality of their mission as soldiers of
the cross by plundering, torturing, and slaying Jews. The
crusade against the Turk was interpreted as a crusade directed
not less explicitly against the descendants of those who had
crucified the Redeemer. The streets of Verdun and Treves
and of the great cities on the Rhine ran red with the blood of
their victims; and if some saved their lives by pretended con-
versions, many more cheated their persecutors by throwing their
property and their persons either into the rivers or into the con-
suming fires.

A space of six hundred miles lay between the Austrian fron-
tier and Constantinople; and across the dreary waste the fol-
lowers of Walter the Penniless struggled on, destitute of money,
and rousing the hostility of the inhabitants whom they robbed
and ill-used. In Bulgaria their misdeeds provoked reprisals
which threatened their destruction; and none perhaps would
have reached Constantinople if the imperial commander at
Naissos had not rescued them from their enemies, supplied them
with food, and guarded them through the remainder of their
journey. These succors involved some costs; and the costs
were paid by the sale of unarmed men among the pilgrims, and
especially of the women and children, who were seized to pro-
vide the necessary funds. Of those who formed the train of the
hermit Peter, seven thousand only, it is said, reached Con-
stantinople.

28o THE FIRST CRUSADE

Of such a rabble rout the emperor Alexius * needed not to
be afraid. He had already seen and encountered far larger
armies of Normans, Turks, and Romans; and he now ex-
tended to this vanguard of the hosts of Latin Christendom a
hospitality which was almost immediately abused. They had
refused to comply with his request that they should quietly
await the arrival of their fellow-crusaders; and consulting
the safety of his people not less than his own, he induced them
to cross the Bosporus, and pitch their camp on Asiatic soil,
the land which they had come to wrest from the unbelievers.

Alexius wished simply to be rid of their presence: they had
to deal with an enemy still more crafty and formidable in the
Seljukian sultan David. The vagrants whom Peter and Wal-
ter had brought thus far on the road to Jerusalem were scat-
tered about the land in search of food; and it was no hard task
for David to cheat the main body with the false tidings that
their companions had carried the walls of Nice, and were revel-
ling in the pleasures and spoils of his capital. The doomed
horde rushed into the plain which fronts the city; and a vast
heap of bones alone remained to tell the story of the great
catastrophe, when the forces which might more legitimately
claim the name of an army passed the spot where the Seljukian
had entrapped and crushed his victims. In this wild expedi-
tion not less, it is said, than three hundred thousand human
beings had already paid the penalty of their lives.

Still the First Crusade was destined to accomplish more than
any of the seven or eight crusades which followed it; and this
measure of success it achieved probably because none of the
great European sovereigns took part in it. The task of setting
up a Latin kingdom in Palestine was to be achieved by princes
of the second order.

Of these the foremost and the most deservedly illustrious
was Godfrey, of Bouillon in the Ardennes, a kinsman of the
counts of Boulogne, and Duke of Lotharingen (Lorraine). In
the service of the emperor Henry IV, the enemy or the victim
of Hildebrand, he had been the first to mount the walls of
Rome and cleave his way into the city; he might now hope
that his crusading vow would be accepted as an atonement for
1 Head of the Byzantine empire.

THE FIRST CRUSADE 281

his sacrilege. Speaking the Frank and Teutonic dialects with
equal ease, he exercised by his bravery, his wisdom, and the
uprightness of his life an influence which brought to his stand-
ard, it is said, not less than eighty thousand infantry and ten
thousand horsemen, together with his brothers Baldwin and
Eustace, Count of Boulogne.

Among the most conspicuous of Godfrey's colleagues was
Hugh, Count of Vermandois. With him may be placed the
Norman duke Robert, whose carelessness had lost him the crown
of England, and who had now pawned his duchy for a pittance
scarcely less paltry than that for which Esau bartered away his
birthright. The number of the great chiefs who led the pilgrims
from Northern Europe is completed with the names of Robert,
Count of Flanders, and of Stephen, Count of Chartres, Troyes,
and Blois.

Foremost, by virtue of his title and office, among the leaders
of the southern bands was the papal legate Adhemar (Aymer)
Bishop of Puy — a leader rather as guiding the counsels of the
army than as gathering soldiers under his banner.

A hundred thousand horse and foot attested, we are told,
the greatness, the wealth, and the zeal of Raymond, Count of
Toulouse, lord of Auvergne and Languedoc, who had grown
old in warfare.

Less tinged with the fanatical enthusiasm of his comrades,
and certainly more cool and deliberate in his ambition, Bohe-
mond, son of Robert Guiscard, looked to the crusade as a means
by which he might regain the vast regions extending from the
Dalmatian coast to the northern shores of the ^Egean. Nay, if
we are to believe William of Malmesbury, he urged Urban to
set forward the enterprise for the very purpose, partly, of thus
recovering what he was pleased to regard as his inheritance,
and in part of enabling the Pontiff to suppress all opposition in
Rome. Guiscard had left his Apulian domains to a younger
son, and Bohemond was resolved, it would seem, to add to his
principality of Tarentum a kingdom which would make him a
formidable rival of the Eastern Emperor.

Far above Bohemond rises his cousin Tancred, the son of
the marquis Odo, surnamed the Good, and of Emma, the sister
of Robert Guiscard.

282 THE FIRST CRUSADE

In Tancred was seen the embodiment of those peculiar
sentiments and modes of thought which gave birth to the cru-
sades, and to which the crusades in their turn imparted mar-
vellous strength and splendor.

The miserable remnant of three thousand men who escaped
from the field of blood before the city of the Seljukian sultan
found a refuge in Byzantine territory about the time when the
better appointed armies of the crusaders were setting off on
their eastward journey. The most disciplined of these troops
set out with a vast following from the banks of the Meuse and
the Moselle under Godfrey of Bouillon, who led them safely
and without opposition to the Hungarian border. Here the
armies of Hungary barred the way against the advance of a
host at whose hands they dreaded a repetition of the havoc
wrought by the lawless bands of Peter the Hermit and his self-
chosen colleagues. Three weeks passed away in vain attempts
to get over the difficulty. The Hungarian King demanded as a
hostage Baldwin, the brother of the general: the demand was
refused, and Godfrey put him to shame by surrendering him-
self. He asked only for a free passage and a free market; but
although these were granted, it was not in his power to prevent
some disorder and some depredations as his army or horde
passed through the country. The mischief might have been
much worse, had not the Hungarian cavalry, acting professedly
as a friendly escort, but really as cautious warders, kept close to
the crusading hosts.

At length they reached the gates of Philippopolis, and here
Godfrey learned that Hugh of Vermandois, whose coming had
been announced to the Greek emperor Alexius by four-and-
twenty knights in golden armor, and who styled himself the
brother of the king of kings and lord of all the Prankish hosts,
was a prisoner within the walls of Constantinople. With Rob-
ert of Normandy and Robert of Flanders, with Stephen of
Chartres and some lesser chiefs, Hugh had chosen to make his
way through Italy ; and the charms of that voluptuous land had
a greater effect, it seems, in breaking up and corrupting their
forces than the delights of Capua had in weakening the soldiers
of Hannibal.

With little regard to order, the chiefs determined to cross

THE FIRST CRUSADE 283

the sea as best they might. Hugh embarked at Ban; and if we
may believe Anna Comnena, the historian and the worshipper
of her father Alexius, his fleet was broken by a tempest which
shattered his own ship on the coast between Palos and Dyrrha-
chium (Durazzo), of which John Comnenus, the nephew of the
Emperor, was at this time the governor. The Frank chief was
here detained until the good pleasure of Alexius should be
known. That wary and cunning prince saw at once how much
might be made of his prisoner, who was by his orders conducted
with careful respect and ceremony to the capital. Kept here
really as a hostage, but welcomed to outward seeming as a
friend, Hugh was so completely won by the charm of manner
which Alexius well knew how and when to put on, that, paying
him homage and declaring himself his man, he promised to do
what he could to induce others to follow his example.

From Philippopolis Godfrey sent ambassadors to Alexius,
demanding the immediate surrender of Hugh. The request
was refused, and Godfrey resumed his march, treating the land
through which he passed as an enemy's country, until by way of
Adrianople he at length appeared before the walls of the capital
at Christmastide, 1096. The fears of Alexius were aroused by
the sight of a host so vast and so formidable: they quickened
into terror as he thought of the armies which were still on their
way under the command of Bohemond and Tancred. Of God-
frey, beyond the fact of his mission as a crusader, he knew little
or nothing; but in Bohemond he saw one who claimed as his
inheritance no small portion of his empire. This gathering of
myriads, whom a false step on his part might convert into
open enemies, was the result of his own entreaties urged through
his envoys before Urban II in the Council of Piacenza; and his
mind was divided between a feverish anxiety to hurry them on
to their destination and so to rid himself of their hateful pres-
ence, and the desire to retain a hold not only on the crusading
chiefs but on any conquests which they might make in Syria.

Hugh was sent back to Godfrey's camp; but the quarrel
was patched up, rather than ended. It was easier to rouse
suspicion and jealousy than to restore friendship. But it was of
the first importance for Alexius that he should secure the hom-
age of the princes already gathered round his capital before the

284 THE FIRST CRUSADE

arrival of his ancient enemy Bohemond. In this he succeeded,
and a compact was made by which Alexius pledged them his
word that he would supply them with food and aid them in their
eastward march, and would protect all pilgrims passing through
his dominions. On the other hand the crusading chiefs, as al-
ready subjects of other sovereigns, gave their fealty to the Em-
peror as their liege lord only for the time during which they
might remain within his borders, and undertook to restore to
him such of their conquests as had been recently wrested from
the empire.

The policy and the bribes of Alexius had overcome the oppo-
sition of Bohemond. He was to experience a stouter resistance
from Raymond of Toulouse, who, though he had been the first
to enlist, was the last to set out on his crusade.

The Count of Toulouse scarcely regarded himself as the
vassal even of the French King. He was ready, he said, to be
the friend of Alexius on equal terms; but he would not declare
himself to be his man. On this point he was immovable, al-
though Bohemond tried the effect of a threat (which was never
forgiven), that if the quarrel came to blows, he should be found
on the side of the Emperor. But Alexius soon saw that in Ray-
mond he had to deal with an enthusiast as sincere and persistent
as Godfrey. He took his measures accordingly, winning the
heart of the old warrior, although he failed to compel his obe-
dience.

While Alexius was busied in dealing with Godfrey and
Raymond, Bohemond and Tancred, he was not less anxiously oc-
cupied with the task of sending across the Bosporus the swarms
which might soon become an army of devouring locusts round
his own capital. It was easier to give them a welcome than to
get rid of them: and more than two months had passed since
Christmas, when the followers of Godfrey found themselves on
the soil of Asia.

Godfrey's men had no sooner been landed on the eastern
side of the Bosporus than all the vessels which had transported
them were brought back to the western shore. With great astute-
ness, and at the cost of large gifts, Alexius in like manner
freed the neighborhood of his capital from the invading mul-
titudes. As fast as they came they were hurried across, and

THE FIRST CRUSADE 285

the Emperor breathed more freely when, on the Feast of
Pentecost, not a single Latin pilgrim remained on the European
shore.

The danger of conflict had throughout been imminent;
and the danger arose, not so much from the fact that the cru-
saders were armed men, marching through the country of pro-
fessed allies, but from the thorough antagonism between Greeks
and Latins in modes of thought and habits of life. Nor must
we forget the vast gulf which separated the Eastern from the
Western clergy. The clergy of the West despised their brethren
of the East for their cowardly submission to the secular arm.
These, in their turn, shrunk with horror from the sight of bish-
ops, priests, and monks riding with blood-stained weapons
over fields of battle, and exhibiting at other times an ignorance
equal to their ferocity.

The strength and valor of the crusaders were soon to be
tested. They were now face to face with the Turks, on whose
cowardice Urban II had enlarged with so much complacency
before the Council of Clermont. The sultan David, or Kilidje
Arslan, placed his family and treasures in his capital city of Nice
and retreated with fifty thousand horsemen to the mountains,
whence he swooped down from time to time on the outposts of
the Christians. By these his city was formally invested; and
for seven weeks it was assailed to little purpose by the old instru-
ments of Roman warfare, while some of the besiegers shot their
weapons from the hill on which were mouldering the bones of
the fanatic followers of Peter. It was protected to the west by
the Askanian lake, and so long as the Turks had command of
this lake they felt themselves safe. But Alexius sent thither on
sledges a large number of boats, and the city, subjected to a
double blockade, submitted to the Emperor, who was hi no way
anxious to see the crusaders masters of the place. The cru-
saders were making ready for the last assault, when they saw
the imperial banner floating on the walls. Their disappoint-
ment at the escape of the miscreants, or unbelievers, for so they
delighted to speak of them, was vented in threats which seemed
to bode a renewal of the old troubles; but Alexius, with gifts,
which added force to his words, professed that his only desire
now, as it had been, was to forward them safely on their jour-

286 THE FIRST CRUSADE

ney. Nor had they to go many stages before they found them-
selves again confronted with their adversary.

The conflict took place near the Phrygian Dorylaion, and
seemed at first to portend dire defeat to the crusaders. More
than once the issue of the day seemed to be turned by the in-
domitable personal bravery of the Norman Robert, of Tancred,
and of Bohemond; and when even those seemed likely to be
borne down, they received timely succors from Godfrey, and
Hugh of Vermandois, from Bishop Adhemar of Puy and from
Raymond, Count of Toulouse. Still the Turks held out, and it
seemed likely that they would long hold out, when the appear-
ance of the last division of Raymond's army filled them with
the fear that a new host was upon them.

The crusaders had won a considerable victory. Three
thousand knights belonging to the enemy had been slain, and
Kilidje Arslan was hurrying away to enlist the services of his
kinsmen. Meanwhile the Latin hosts were sweeping onward.
Hundreds died from the heat, and dogs or goats took the place
of the baggage-horses which had perished. At length Tancred
with his troop found himself before Tarsus, the birthplace
and the home of that single-hearted apostle who long ago had
preached a gospel strangely unlike the creed of the crusaders.
Following rapidly behind him, Baldwin saw with keen jealousy
the banner of the Italian chief floating on its towers, and in-
sisted on taking the precedence. Tancred pleaded the choice
of the people and his own promise to protect them; but the
intrigues of Baldwin changed their humor, and the rejection of
Tancred by the men of Tarsus was followed by an attempt at
private war between Tancred and Baldwin, in which the troops
of Tancred were overborne. So early was the first harvest of
murderous discord reaped among the holy warriors of the Cross.
It was ruin, however, to stay where they were; and the main
army again began its march, to undergo once more the old
monotony of hardship and peril.

A very small force would have sufficed to disorganize and
rout them as they clambered over the defiles of Mount Taurus;
nor could Raymond, recovering from a terrible illness, or
Godfrey, suffering from wounds inflicted by a bear, have done
much to help them. But for the present their enemies were

THE FIRST CRUSADE 287

dismayed; and Baldwin, brother of Godfrey, hastened with
eagerness to obey a summons which besought him to aid the
Greek or Armenian tyrant of Edessa. As Alexius had done to
his brother, so this chief welcomed Baldwin as his son; but
Baldwin, having once entered into the city, cared nothing for the
means which had brought him thither, and the death of his
adoptive father was followed by the establishment at Edessa of
a Latin principality which lasted for fifty-four, or, as some
have thought, forty-seven years. Baldwin had anticipated the
unconditional surrender of Samosata; but the Turkish governor
had some of the Edessenes in his power, and he refused to give
up the city except on the payment of ten thousand gold pieces.
The Turk shortly afterward fell into Baldwin's hands, and was
put to death.

Meanwhile the main army of the crusaders was advancing
toward the Syrian capital (Antioch), that ancient and luxu-
rious city whose fame had gone over the whole Roman world for
its magnificence, its unbounded wealth, its soft delights, and its
unholy pleasures. The days of its greatest splendor had passed
away. Its walls were partially in ruins; its buildings were in
some parts crumbling away or had already fallen; but against
assailants utterly ignorant and awkward in all that relates to
the blockade of cities it was still a formidable position. Nor
could they invest it until they had passed the iron bridge — so
called from its iron-plated gates — of nine stone arches, which
spanned the stream of the Ifrin at a distance of nine miles from
the city. This bridge was carried by the impetuous charge of
Robert of Normandy, aided by the more steady efforts of God-
frey; and in the language of an age which delighted in round
numbers, a hundred thousand warriors hurried across to seize
the splendid prize which now seemed almost within their
grasp.

But the city was in the hands of men who had been long
accustomed to despise the Greeks, and who had not yet learned
to respect the valor of the Latins. Preparing himself for a
resolute defence, the Seljukian governor Baghasian had sent
away as useless, if not mischievous, most of the Christians
within the town ; and the crusading chiefs had begun to discuss
the prudence of postponing all operations till the spring, when

288 THE FIRST CRUSADE

Raymond of Toulouse with some other chiefs insisted that
delay would imply fear, and that the imputation of cowardice
would insure the paralysis of their enterprise. The city was
therefore at once invested, so far as the forces of the crusaders
could suffice to encircle it; and a siege began which in the eyes
of the military historian must be absolutely without interest, and
of which the issue was decided by paroxysms of fanatical vehe-
mence on the one side, and by lack, not of bravery, but of gen-
eralship on the other. Of the eastern and northern walls the
blockade was complete; of the west it was partial; and the
failure to invest a portion of the western wall, with two out of
the five gates of the city, left the movements of the Turks in this
direction free.

But the besiegers were in no hurry to begin the work of
death. The wealth of the harvest and the vintage spread
before them its irresistible temptations, and the herds feeding
in the rich pastures seemed to promise an endless feast. The
cattle, the corn, and the wine were alike wasted with besotted
folly, while the Turks within the walls received tidings, it is
said, of all that passed in the crusading camp from some Greek
and Armenian Christians to whom they allowed free egress and
ingress. Of this knowledge they availed themselves in planning
the sallies by which they caused great distress to the besiegers,
whose clumsy engines and devices seemed to produce no result
beyond the waste of time, and who felt perhaps that they had
done something when they blocked up the gate of the bridge
with huge stones dug from the neighboring quarries.

Three months passed away, and the crusaders found them-
selves not conquerors, but in desperate straits from famine.
The winter rains had turned the land round their camp into a
swamp, and lack of food left them more and more unable to
resist the pestilential diseases which were rapidly thinning their
numbers. A foraging expedition under Bohemond and Tan-
cred filled the camp with food; it was again recklessly wasted.
The second famine scared away Tatikios, the lieutenant of the
Greek emperor Alexius; but the crusading chiefs were perhaps
still more disgusted by the desertion of William of Melun, called
"the Carpenter," from the sledge-hammer blows which he dealt
out in battle. Hunger obtained a victory even over the hermit

THE FIRST CRUSADE 289

Peter, who was stealing away with William of Melun, when he
with his companion was caught by Tancred and brought back
to the tent of Bohemond.

For a moment the look of things was changed by the arrival
of ambassadors from Egypt. To the Fatimite caliph of that
country the progress of the crusading arms had thus far brought
with it but little dissatisfaction. The humiliation of the Selju-
kian Turks could not fail to bring gain to himself, if the flood
of Latin conquests could be checked and turned back in time.
His generals besieged Jerusalem and Tyre; and when the Fati-
mite once more ruled in Palestine, his envoys hastened to the
crusaders' camp to announce the deliverance of the Holy Land
from its oppressors, to assure to all unarmed and peaceable
pilgrims a month's unmolested sojourn in Jerusalem, and to
promise them his aid during their march, on condition that they
should acknowledge his supremacy within the limits of his Syrian
empire.

The arguments and threats of the Caliph were alike thrown
away. The Latin chiefs disclaimed all interest in the feuds
and quarrels of rival sultans and in the fortunes of Mahometan
sects. God himself had destined Jerusalem for the Christians,
and if any held it who were not Christians, these were usurpers
whose resistance must be punished by their expulsion or their
death. The envoys departed not encouraged by this answer,
and still more perplexed by the appearance of plenty and by
the magnificence of a camp in which they had expected to see
a terrible spectacle of disorder and misery.

The resolute persistence of the besiegers convinced Bagha-
sian of the need of reinforcements. These were hastening to
him from Caesarea, Aleppo, and other places, when they were
cut off by Bohemond and Raymond, who sent a multitude of
heads to the envoys of the Fatimite Caliph, and discharged
many hundreds from their engines into the city of Antioch.
The Turks had their opportunity for reprisals when the arrival
of some Pisan and Genoese ships at the mouth of the Orontes
drew off the greater part of the besieging army. The crusaders
were returning with provisions and arms, when their enemies
started upon them from an ambuscade. The battle was fierce;
but the defeat of Raymond, which threatened dire disaster,
E., VOL. v. — 19.

290 THE FIRST CRUSADE

was changed into victory on the arrival of Godfrey and the Nor-
man Robert, whose exploits equalled or surpassed, if we are to
believe the story, even those of Arthur, Lancelot, or Tristram.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of Turks fell. Their bodies were
buried by their comrades in the cemetery without the walls:
the Christians dug them up, severed the heads from the trunks,
and paraded the ghastly trophies on their pikes, not forgetting
to send a goodly number to the Egyptian -Caliph, by way of
showing how his Seljukian friends or enemies had fared. The •
picture is disgusting; but if we shut our eyes to these loathsome
details, the truth of the history is gone. We are dealing with the
wars of savages, and it is right that we should know this.

The next scene exhibits Godfrey and Bohemond in fierce
quarrel about a splendid tent, which, being intended as a gift
for the former, had been seized by an Armenian chief and sent
to the latter. But there was now more serious business on hand.
Rumor spoke of the near approach of a Persian army, and the
besieged, under the plea of wishing to arrange terms of capitu-
lation, obtained a truce which they sought probably only for the
sake of gaining time. The days passed by, but no offers were
made; and their disposition was shown by seizing a crusading
knight in the groves near the city and tearing his body in
pieces. The Latins returned with increased fury to the siege:
but the defence, although more feeble, was still protracted, and
Bohemond began to feel not only that fraud might succeed
where force had failed, but that from fraud he might reap, not
safety merely, but wealth and greatness. His plans were laid
with a renegade Christian named Phirouz, high in the favor
of the governor, with whom he had come into contact either
during the truce or in some other way. By splendid promises
he insured the zealous aid of his new ally, and then came for-
ward in the council with the assurance that he could place the
city in their hands, but that he could do this only on condition
that he should rule in Antioch as Baldwin ruled in Edessa.
His claim was angrily opposed by the Provencal Raymond;
but this opposition was overruled, and it was resolved that the
plan should be carried out at once.

There was need for so doing. Rumors spread within the
city that some attempt was to be made to betray the place to

THE FIRST CRUSADE 291

the besiegers, and hinfs or open accusations pointed out Phi-
rouz as the traitor. Like other traitors, the renegade thought it
best to anticipate the charge by urging that the guards of the
towers should on the very next day be changed. His proposal
was received as indubitable proof of his innocence and his
faithfulness; but he had made up his mind that Antioch should
fall that night, and that night by means of a rope ladder Bohe-
mond with about sixty followers (the ropes broke before more
could ascend) climbed up the wall. Seizing ten towers, of which
all the guards were killed, they opened a gate, and the Christian
host rushed in. The banner of Bohemond rose on one of the
towers; the trumpets sounded for the onset, and a carnage
began in which at first the assailants took no heed to distinguish
between the Christian and the Turk. In the awful confusion of
the moment some of the besieged made their way to the citadel,
and there shut themselves in, ready to resist to the death. Of
the rest few escaped; ten thousand, it is said, were massacred.
Baghasian with some friends passed out beyond the besiegers'
lines, but, fainting from loss of blood, he fell from his horse, and
his companions hurried on. A Syrian Christian heard his
groans, and striking off his head carried the prize to the camp
of the conquerors. Phirouz lived to be a second time a rene-
gade, and to close his career as a thief.

The victory was for the crusaders a change from famine to
abundance; and their feasting was accompanied by the wildest
riot and the most filthy debauchery. But if heedless waste may
have been one of the most venial of their sins, it was the great-
est of their blunders. The reports which spoke of the approach
of the Persians were not false. The Turks within the citadel
suddenly found that they were rather besiegers than besieged,
and that the Christians were hemmed in by the myriads of
Kerboga, Prince of Mosul, and the warriors of Kilidje Arslan.
The old horrors of famine were now repeated, but in greater
intensity; and the doom of the Latin host seemed now to be
sealed.

Stephen, Count of Chartres, had deserted his companions
before the fall of the city; others now followed his example, and
with him set out on their return to Europe. In Phrygia, Stephen
encountered the emperor Alexius, who was marching to the

292 THE FIRST CRUSADE

aid of the crusaders, not only with a Greek army, but with a
force of well-appointed pilgrims who had reached Constanti-
nople after the departure of Godfrey and his fellows. The
story told by Stephen drove out of his head every thought except
that of his own safety. The order for retreat was given; and
the pilgrim warriors, not less than the Greeks, were compelled
to turn their faces westward.

In Antioch the crusading soldiers were fast sinking into utter
despair. Discipline had well-nigh come to an end, and so ob-
stinate was their refusal to bear arms any longer that Bohe-
mond resolved to burn them out of their quarters. These were
consumed by the flames, which spread so rapidly as to fill him
with fear that he had destroyed, not only their dwellings, but his
whole principality. His experiment brought the men back to
their duty; but so despondingly was their work done that but
for some signal succor the end, it was manifest, must soon come.
In a credulous age such succor at the darkest hour, if obtained
at all, will generally be obtained through miracle. A Lombard
priest came forward, to whom St. Ambrose of Milan had de-
clared in a vision that the third year of the crusade should see
the conquest of Jerusalem; another had seen the Saviour him-
self, attended by his Virgin Mother and the Prince of the Apos-
tles, had heard from his lips a stern rebuke of the crusaders for
yielding to the seductions of pagan women — as if the profes-
sion of Christianity altered the color and the guilt of a vice —
and lastly had received the distinct assurance that in five days
they should have the help which they needed.

The hopes of the crusaders were roused; with hope came a
return of vigorous energy; and Peter Barthelemy, chaplain to
Raymond of Toulouse, seized the opportunity for recounting
a vision which was to be something more than a dream. To
him St. Andrew had revealed the fact that in the Church of St.
Peter lay hidden the steel head of the spear which had pierced
the side of the Redeemer as he hung upon the cross; and that
Holy Lance should win them victory over all their enemies as
surely as the spear which imparted irresistible power to the
Knight of the Sangreal. After two days of special devotion they
were to search for the long- lost weapon; on the third day the
workmen began to dig, but until the sun had set they toiled in

THE FIRST CRUSADE 293

vain. The darkness of night made it easier for the chaplain to
play the part which Sir Walter Scott, in the Antiquary, assigns
to Herman Dousterswivel in the ruins of St. Ruth. Barefooted
and with a single garment the priest went down into the pit.
For a time the strokes of his spade were heard, and then the
sacred relic was found, carefully wrapped in a veil of silk and
gold. The priest proclaimed his discovery; the people rushed
into the church; and from the church throughout the city spread
the flame of a fierce enthusiasm.

Nine or ten months later Peter Barthelemy paid the penalty
of his life for his fraud or his superstition. A bribe taken by
his master Raymond brought that chief into ill odor with his
comrades, and let loose against his chaplain the tongue of Ar-
nold, the chaplain of Bohemond. Raymond had traded on
fresh visions of his clerk; and Arnold boldly attacked him in
his citadel by denying the genuineness of the Holy Lance.
Peter appealed to the ordeal of fire. He passed through the
flames, as it seemed, unhurt. The bystanders pressed to feel
his flesh, and were vehement hi then* rejoicings at the result which
vindicated his integrity. He had really received fatal injuries.
Twelve days afterward he died, and Raymond suffered greatly
in his dignity and his influence.

The infidel was doomed; but the crusaders resolved to give
him one chance of escape. Peter the Hermit was sent as their
envoy to Kerboga to offer the alternative of departure from a
land which St. Peter had bestowed on the faithful, or of bap-
tism which should leave him master of the city and territory of
Antioch. The reply was short and decisive. The Turk would
not embrace an idolatry which he hated and despised, nor would
he give up soil which belonged to him by right of conquest.
The report of the hermit raised the spirit of the crusaders to
fever heat; and on the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul they
marched out in twelve divisions, in remembrance of the mission
of the Twelve Apostles, while Raymond of Toulouse remained
to prevent the escape of the Turks shut up in the citadel. The
Holy Lance was borne by the papal legate, Adhemar, Bishop of
Puy; and the morning air laden with the perfume of roses was
now regarded as a sign assuring them of the divine favor.
They were prepared to see good omens in everything; and they

294 THE FIRST CRUSADE

went in full confidence that departed saints would, as they had
been told, take part in the battle and smite down the infideL
The fight — one of brute force on the Christian side, of some
little skill as well as strength on the other — had gone on for
some time when such help seemed to become needful. Tan-
cred had hurried to the aid of Bohemond, who was grievously
pressed by Kilidje Arslan; and Kerboga was bearing heavily
on Godfrey and Hugh of Vermandois, when, clothed in white
armor and riding on white horses, some human forms were seen
on the neighboring heights. "The saints are coming to your
aid," shouted the Bishop of Puy, and the people saw in these
radiant strangers the martyrs St. George, St. Maurice, and St.
Theodore.

Without awaiting their nearer approach the crusaders turned
on the enemy with a force and fury which were now irresistible.
Their cavalry could do little. Two hundred horses only re-
mained of the sixty thousand which had filled the plain a few
months before. But the hedge of spears advanced like a wall of
iron, and the Turks gave way, broke, and fled. It was rout, not
retreat; and with the crusaders victory was followed by the
massacre of men, women, and children. The garrison in the
citadel at once surrendered. Some declared themselves Chris-
tians and were baptized; those who refused to abandon Islam
were taken to the nearest Mohametan territory. The city was
the prize of Bohemond ; and in his keeping it remained, although
Raymond of Toulouse had made an effort to seize it by hoisting
his banner on the walls. The work of pillage being ended, the
churches were cleansed and repaired, and their altars blazed
with golden spoils taken from the infidel. The Greek Patriarch
was again seated on his throne; but he held his office at the good
pleasure of the Latins, and two years later he was made to give
place to Bernard, a chaplain of the Bishop of Puy.

Ten months had passed away after the conquest of Antioch
when the main body of the crusading army set out on its march
to Jerusalem. They had wished to depart at once, but their
chiefs dreaded to encounter waterless wastes at the end of a Syr-
ian summer, and for the present they were content to send
Hugh of Vermandois and Baldwin of Hainault as envoys to the
Greek Emperor, to reproach him with his remissness or his

THE FIRST CRUSADE 295

want of faith. But the miseries endured by Christians and
Turks were the pleasantest tidings in the ears of Alexius, for in
the weakening of both lay his own strength; and he saw with
satisfaction the departure of Hugh, not for Antioch, but for
Europe, whither Stephen of Chartres had preceded him.

Winter came, but the chiefs still lingered at Antioch.
Some were occupied in expeditions against neighboring cities;
but a more pressing care was the plague which punished the
foulness and disorder of the pilgrims. A band of fifteen hun-
dred Germans, recently landed in strong health and full equip-
ments, were all, it is said, cut off; and among the victims the
most lamented perhaps was the papal legate Adhemar. A
feeling of discouragement was again spreading through the
army generally. The chiefs vainly entreated the Pope to visit
the city where the disciples of St. Peter first received the Chris-
tian name ; the people were disheartened by the animosities and
the selfish or crooked policy of their chiefs. Raymond still
hankered after the principality of Antioch, and insisted that
Bohemond and his people should share in the last great enter-
prise of the crusade. More disgraceful than these feuds were
the scenes witnessed during the siege and after the conquest of
Marra. Heedlessness and waste soon brought the assailants
to devour the flesh of dogs and of human beings. The bodies
of Turks were torn from their sepulchres, ripped up for the gold
which they were supposed to have swallowed, and the frag-
ments cooked and eaten. Of the besieged many slew them-
selves to avoid falling into the hands of the Christians; to some
Bohemond, tempted by a large bribe, gave an assurance of
safety. When the massacre had begun he ordered these to be
brought forward. The weak and old he slaughtered; the rest
he sent to the slave markets of Antioch.

A weak attempt made by Alexius to detain the crusaders
only spurred them to more vigorous efforts. They had already
left Antioch, and Laodicea was in their hands, when he desired
them to await his coming in June. The chiefs, remembering
the departure of Tatikios with his Byzantine troops for Cyprus,
retorted that he had broken his compact, and had therefore no
further claims on their obedience. Hastening on their way,
they crossed the plain of Berytos (Beyrout), overlooked by the

296 THE FIRST CRUSADE

eternal snows of Lebanon, along the narrow strip of land whence
the great Phoenician cities had sent their seamen and their colo-
nists, with all the wealth of the East, to the shores of the Adri-
atic and the gates of the Mediterranean. Having reached Jaffa,
they turned inland to Ramlah, a town sixteen miles only from
Jerusalem.

Two days later the crusaders came in sight of the Holy City,
the object of their long pilgrimage, the cause of wretchedness
and death to millions. As their eyes rested on the scene hal-
lowed to them through all the associations of their faith, the
crusaders passed in an instant from fierce enthusiasm to a hu-
miliation which showed itself in sighs and tears. All fell on
their knees, to kiss the sacred earth and to pour forth thanks-
givings that they had been suffered to look upon the desire of
their eyes. Putting aside their armor and their weapons, they
advanced in pilgrim's garb and with bare feet toward the spot
which the Saviour had trodden in the hours of his agony and
his passion.

But before their feelings of devotion could be indulged,
there was other work to be done. The chiefs took up their
posts on those sides from which the nature of the ground gave
most hope of a successful assault. On the northern side were
Godfrey and Tancred, Robert of Flanders, and Robert of Nor-
mandy; on the west Raymond with his Provenjals. On the
fifth day, without siege instruments, with only one ladder, and
trusting to mere weight, the crusaders made a desperate
assault upon the walls. Some succeeded in reaching the sum-
mit, and the very rashness of their attack struck terror for a
moment into their enemies. But the garrison soon rallied, and
the invaders were all driven back or hurled from the ramparts.
The task, it was manifest, must be undertaken in a more formal
manner. Siege engines must be made, and the palm and olive
of the immediate neighborhood would not supply fit materials
for their construction.

These were obtained from the woods of Shechem, a dis-
tance of thirty miles; and the work of preparation was carried
on under the guidance of Gaston of Beam by the crews of some
Genoese vessels which had recently anchored at Jaffa. So
passed away more than thirty days, days of intense suffering to

THE FIRST CRUSADE 297

the besiegers. At Antioch they had been distressed chiefly by
famine: in place of this wretchedness they had here the greater
miseries of thirst. The enemy had carefully destroyed every
place which might serve as a receptacle of water; and in seeking
for it over miles of desolate country they were exposed to the
harassing attacks of Moslem horsemen. Nor had visions and
miracles improved the morals or discipline of the camp ; and the
ghost of Adhemar of Puy appeared to rebuke the horrible sins
which were drawing down upon them the judgments of the
Almighty. Better service was done by the generosity of Tan-
cred, who made up his quarrel with Raymond: and the enthu-
siasm of the crusaders was again roused by the preaching of
Arnold and the hermit Peter. The narrative of the siege of
Jericho in the book of Joshua suggested probably the proces-
sion in which the clergy singing hymns preceded the laity round
the walls of the city.

The Saracens on the ramparts mocked their devotions by
throwing dirt upon crucifixes; but they paid a terrible price for
these insults. On the next day the final assault began, and was
carried on through the day with the same monotony of brute
force and carnage which marked all the operations of this mer-
ciless war. The darkness of night brought no rest. The actual
combat Was suspended, but the besieged were incessantly occu-
pied in repairing the breaches made by the assailants, while
these were busied in making their dispositions for the last mor-
tal conflict. In the midst of that deadly struggle, when it
seemed that the Cross must after all go down before the Crescent,
a knight was seen on Mount Olivet, waving his glistening shield
to rouse the champions of the Holy Sepulchre to the supreme
effort. "It is St. George the Martyr who has come again to
help us," cried Godfrey, and at his words the crusaders started
up without a feeling of fatigue and carried everything before
them.

The day, we are told, was Friday, the hour was three in the
afternoon — the moment at which the last cry from the cross
announced the accomplishment of the Saviour's passion — when
Letold of Tournay stood, the first victorious champion of the
Cross, on the walls of Jerusalem. Next to him came, we are
told, his brother Engelbert; the third was Godfrey. Tancred

2o8 THE FIRST CRUSADE

with the two Roberts stormed the gate of St. Stephen; the
Provencals climbed the ramparts by ladders, and the conquest
of Jerusalem was achieved. The insults offered a little while
ago to the crucifixes were avenged by Godfrey's orders in the
massacre of hundreds; the carnage in the Mosque of Omar
swept away the bodies of thousands in a deluge of human blood.
The Jews were all burnt alive in their synagogues. The horses
of the crusaders, who rode up to the porch of the Temple, were —
so the story goes — up to the knees in the loathsome stream ;
and the forms of Christian knights hacking and hewing the
bodies of the living and the dead furnished a pleasant commen-
tary on the sermon of Urban at Clermont.

From the duties of slaughter these disciples of the Lamb of
God passed to those of devotion. Bareheaded and barefooted,
clad in a robe of pure white linen, in an ecstasy of joy and
thankfulness mingled with profound contrition, Godfrey en-
tered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and knelt at the tomb
of his Lord. With groans and tears his followers came, each in
his turn, to offer his praises for the divine mercy which had
vouchsafed this triumph to the armies of Christendom. With
feverish earnestness they poured forth the vows which bound
them to sin no more, and the excitement of prayer and slaughter,
perhaps of both combined, led them to see everything which
might be needed to give effect to the closing scene of this appall-
ing tragedy. As the saints had arisen from their graves when
the Son of Man gave up the ghost on Calvary, so the spirits of
the pilgrims who had died on the terrible journey came to take
part in the great thanksgiving. Foremost among them was
Adhemar of Puy, rejoicing in the prayers for forgiveness and
the resolutions of repentance which promised a new era of peace
upon earth and of good- will toward all men.

With departed saints were mingled living men who deserved
all the honor which might be paid to them. The backsliding of
the hermit Peter was blotted out of the memory of those who
remembered only the fiery eloquence which had first called
them to their now triumphant pilgrimage, and the zeal which
had stirred the heart of Christendom to cut short the tyranny of
the Unbeliever in the birthland of Christianity. The assembled
throng fell down at his feet, and gave thanks to God, who had

THE FIRST CRUSADE 299

vouchsafed to them such a teacher. His task was done, and in
the annals of the time Peter is heard of no more.

On this dreadful day Tancred had spared three hundred
captives to whom he had given a standard as a pledge of his
protection and a guarantee of their safety. Such misplaced
mercy was a crime in the eyes of the crusaders. The massacre
of the first day may have been aggravated by the ungovernable
excitement of victory; but it was resolved that on the next day
there should be offered up a more solemn and deliberate sacri-
fice. The men whom Tancred had spared were all murdered;
and the wrath of Tancred was roused, not by their fate, but by an
act which called his honor into question. The butchery went on
with impartial completeness, old and young, decrepit men and
women, mothers with their infants, boys and girls, young men
and maidens in the bloom of their vigor, all were mowed down,
and their bodies mangled until heads and limbs were tossed
together in awful chaos. A few were hidden away by Raymond
of Toulouse; his motive, however, was not mercy, but the pros-
pects of gain in the slave market. After this great act of faith
and devotion the streets of the Holy City were washed by Sara-
cen prisoners; but whether these were butchered when their
work was ended wre are not told.

Four centuries and a half had passed away, when these
things were done, since Omar had entered Jerusalem as a con-
queror and knelt outside the Church of Constantine, that his
followers might not trespass within it on the privileges of the
Christians. The contrast is at the least marked between the
Caliph of the Prophet and the children of the Holy Catholic
Church.

When, the business of the slaughter being ended, the chiefs
met to choose a king for the realm which they had won with their
swords, one man only appeared to whom the crown could fitly
be offered. Baldwin was lord of Edessa; Bohemond ruled at
Antioch; Hugh of Vermandois and Stephen of Chartres had
returned to Europe; Robert of Flanders cared not to stay; the
Norman Robert had no mind to forfeit the duchy which he had
mortgaged; and Raymond was discredited by his avarice, and
in part also by his traffic in the visions of Peter Barthelemy.
But in the city where his Lord had worn the thorny crown, the

3oo THE FIRST CRUSADE

veteran leader who had looked on ruthless slaughter without
blanching and had borne his share in swelling the stream of
blood would wear no earthly diadem nor take the title of king.
He would watch over his Master's grave and the interests of his
worshippers under the humble guise of Baron and Defender of
the Holy Sepulchre; and as such, a fortnight after his election,
Godfrey departed to do battle with the hosts of 'the Fatimite
Caliph of Egypt, who now felt that the loss of Jerusalem was
too high a price for the humiliation of his rivals. The conflict
took place at Ascalon, and the Fatimite army was miserably
routed. Godfrey returned to Jerusalem, to hang the sword
and standard of the Sultan before the Holy Sepulchre and to bid
farewell to the pilgrims who were now to set out on their home-
ward journey. He retained, with three hundred knights under
Tancred, only two thousand foot soldiers for the defence of his
kingdom; and so ended the first act in the great drama of the
crusades.

FOUNDATION OF THE ORDER OF KNIGHTS
TEMPLARS

A.D. UlS

CHARLES G. ADDISON

Among the military orders of past ages, that of the Knights Templars,
founded for the defence of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, with its lofty
motive, its superb organization and discipline, and its history extending
over nearly two centuries, is justly accounted one of the most illustrious.
At the period when this extraordinary and romantic order came into ex-
istence, the contrasting spirits of warlike enterprise and monastic retire-
ment were drawing men, some from the field to the cloister, others from
the life of ascetic piety to the scenes of strife. There appeared a strange
blending of these two tendencies, which indeed was the leading charac-
teristic of the time. This union of the religious with the militant spirit
had been promoted by the enthusiasm of the crusades which had already
been undertaken, and among the crusaders themselves the blended spir-
itual and military ideal of the holy war had its complete development.
Let us recall the reasons and the beginnings of the crusades them-
selves.

Upon the legendary discovery of the Holy Sepulchre by Helena, the
mother of Constantine, about three hundred years after the death of
Christ, and the consequent erection, as it is said, by her great son — the
first Christian emperor of Rome — of the magnificent Church of the Holy
Sepulchre over the sacred spot, a tide of pilgrimage set in toward Jeru-
salem which increased in strength as Christianity gradually spread
throughout Europe. When in A.D. 637 the Holy City was surrendered
to the Saracens, the caliph Omar gave guarantees for the security of
the Christian population. Under this safeguard the pilgrimages to Jeru-
salem continued to increase, until in 1064 the Holy Sepulchre was visited
by seven thousand pilgrims, led by an archbishop and three bishops.
But in 1065 Jerusalem was taken by the Turcomans, who massacred three
thousand citizens, and placed the command of the city in savage hands.
Terrible oppression of the Christians there followed ; the Patriarch of
Jerusalem was dragged by the hair of his head over the sacred pavement
of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and cast into a dungeon for ran-
som ; extortion, imprisonment, and massacre were indiscriminately visited
upon the people.

Such were the conditions that aroused the indignant spirit of Chris-
tendom and prepared it for the cry of Peter the Hermit, which awoke

301

302 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS

the wild enthusiasm of the crusades. When Jerusalem was captured
by the crusaders under Godfrey of Bouillon in 1099, the zeal of pilgrim-
age burst forth anew. But although Jerusalem was delivered, Palestine
was still infested with the infidels, who made it as hazardous as before
for the pilgrims entering there. Some means for their protection must
be found, and out of this necessity grew the great military order of which
the following pages treat.

HTO alleviate the dangers and distresses to which the pilgrim
enthusiasts were exposed; to guard the honor of the
saintly virgins and matrons, and to protect the gray hairs
of the venerable palmers, nine noble knights formed a holy
brotherhood-in-arms, and entered into a solemn compact to aid
one another in clearing the highways of infidels and robbers,
and in protecting the pilgrims through the passes and defiles
of the mountains to the Holy City. Warmed with the religious
and military fervor of the day, and animated by the sacredness
of the cause to which they had devoted their swords, they called
themselves the " Poor Fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ."

They renounced the world and its pleasures, and in the
Holy Church of the Resurrection, in the presence of the Patri-
arch of Jerusalem, they embraced vows of perpetual chastity,
obedience, and poverty, after the manner of monks. Uniting
in themselves the two most popular qualities of the age, devotion
and valor, and exercising them in the most popular of all enter-
prises, the protection of the pilgrims and of the road to the
Holy Sepulchre, they speedily acquired a vast reputation and a
splendid renown.

At first, we are told, they had no church and no particular
place of abode, but in the year of our Lord 1118 — nineteen
years after the conquest of Jerusalem by the crusaders — they
had rendered such good and acceptable service to the Chris-
tians that Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem, granted them a
place of habitation within the sacred enclosure of the Temple
on Mount Moriah, amid those holy and magnificent structures,
partly erected by the Christian emperor Justinian and partly
built by the caliph Omar, which were then exhibited by the
monks and priests of Jerusalem, whose restless zeal led them
to practise on the credulity of the pilgrims, and to multiply
relics and all objects likely to be sacred in their eyes, as the
Temple of Solomon, whence the "Poor Fellow-soldiers of

THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS 303

Jesus Christ" came thenceforth to be known by the name of
"the Knighthood of the Temple of Solomon."

A few remarks in elucidation of the name "Templars," or
"Knights of the Temple," may not be unacceptable.

By the Mussulmans the site of the great Jewish Temple
on Mount Moriah has always been regarded with peculiar
veneration. Mahomet, in the first year of the publication
of the Koran, directed his followers, when at prayer, to turn
their faces toward it, and pilgrimages have constantly been
made to the holy spot by devout Moslems. On the conquest
of Jerusalem by the Arabians, it was the first care of the caliph
Omar to rebuild "the Temple of the Lord." Assisted by the
principal chieftains of his army, the Commander of the Faith-
ful undertook the pious office of clearing the ground with his
own hands, and of tracing out the foundations of the magnifi-
cent mosque which now crowns with its dark and swelling
dome the elevated summit of Mount Moriah.

This great house of prayer, the most holy Mussulman
temple in the world after that of Mecca, is erected over the
spot where "Solomon began to build the house of the Lord
at Jerusalem in Mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto
David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the
threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite."

It remains to this day in a state of perfect preservation,
and is one of the finest specimens of Saracenic architecture
in existence. It is entered by four spacious doorways, each
door facing one of the cardinal points: the Bab el D'Jannat
(or "Gate of the Garden"), on the north; the Bab el Kebla,
(or "Gate of Prayer "), on the south; the Bab ibn el Daoud (or
" Gate of the Son of David "), on the east; and the Bab el Garbi,
on the west. By the Arabian geographers it is called Beit
Allah ("the House of God"), also Beit Almokaddas or Beit
Almacdes ("the Holy House "). From it Jerusalem derives its
Arabic name, El Kofc (" the Holy "), El Schereef (" the Noble "),
and El Mobarek (" the Blessed ") ; while the governors of the
city, instead of the customary high-sounding titles of sover-
eignty and dominion, take the simple title of Hami (or "Pro-
tectors ").

On the conquest of Jerusalem by the crusaders, the crescent

3o4 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS

was torn down from the summit of this famous Mussulman
temple, and was replaced by an immense golden cross, and
the edifice was then consecrated to the services of the Christian
religion, but retained its simple appellation of "the Temple
of the Lord." William, Archbishop of Tyre and Chancellor
of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, gives an interesting account
of this famous edifice as it existed in his time, during the Latin
dominion. He speaks of the splendid mosaic work, of the
Arabic characters setting forth the name of the founder and
the cost of the undertaking, and of the famous rock under the
centre of the dome, which is to this day shown by the Mos-
lems as the spot whereon the destroying angel stood, "with
his drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem."
This rock, he informs us, was left exposed and uncovered for
the space of fifteen years after the conquest of the Holy City
by the crusaders, but was, after that period, cased with a hand-
some altar of white marble, upon which the priests daily said
mass.

To the south of this holy Mussulman temple, on the ex-
treme edge of the summit of Mount Moriah, and resting against
the modern walls of the town of Jerusalem, stands the vener-
able Church of the Virgin, erected by the emperor Justinian,
whose stupendous foundations, remaining to this day, fully
justify the astonishing description given of the building by
Procopius. That writer informs us that in order to get a
level surface for the erection of the edifice, it was necessary,
on the east and south sides of the hill, to raise up a wall of
masonry from the valley below, and to construct a vast founda-
tion, partly composed of solid stone and partly of arches and
pillars. The stones were of such magnitude that each block
required to be transported in a truck drawn by forty of the
Emperor's strongest oxen; and to admit of the passage of these
trucks it was necessary to widen the roads leading to Jerusalem.
The forests of Lebanon yielded their choicest cedars for the
timbers of the roof; and a quarry of variegated marble, season-
ably discovered in the adjoining mountains, furnished the edi-
fice with superb marble columns.

The interior of this interesting structure, which still remains
at Jerusalem, after a lapse of more than thirteen centuries,

THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS 305

in an excellent state of preservation, is adorned with six rows
of columns, from whence spring arches supporting the cedar
beams and timbers of the roof; and at the end of the building
is a round tower, surmounted by a dome. The vast stones,
the walls of masonry, and the subterranean colonnade raised
to support the southeast angle of the platform whereon the
church is erected are truly wonderful, and may still be seen
by penetrating through a small door and descending several
flights of steps at the southeast corner of the enclosure. Ad-
joining the sacred edifice the Emperor erected hospitals, or
houses of refuge, for travellers, sick people, and mendicants
of all nations; the foundations whereof, composed of handsome
Roman masonry, are still visible on either side of the southern
end of the building.

On the conquest of Jerusalem by the Moslems this vener-
able church was converted into a mosque, and was called
D'Jame al Acsa; it was enclosed, together with the great
Mussulman " Temple of the Lord " erected by the caliph Omar,
within a large area by a high stone wall, which runs around
the edge of the summit of Mount Moriah and guards from
the profane tread of the unbeliever the whole of that sacred
ground whereon once stood the gorgeous Temple of the wisest
of kings.

When the Holy City was taken by the crusaders, the D'Jame
al Acsa, with the various buildings constructed around it,
became the property of the kings of Jerusalem, and is de-
nominated by William of Tyre "the Palace," or "Royal House
to the south of the Temple of the Lord, vulgarly called the
'Temple of Solomon.' " It was this edifice or temple on
Mount Moriah which was appropriated to the use of the "Poor
Fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ," as they had no church and
no particular place of abode, and from it. they derived their
name of " Knights Templars."

James of Vitry, Bishop of Acre, who gives an interesting
account of the holy places, thus speaks of the temple of the
Knights Templars: "There is, moreover, at Jerusalem another
temple of immense spaciousness and extent, from which the
brethren of the Knighthood of the Temple derive their name
of 'Templars,' which is called the 'Temple of Solomon,' per-

E., VOL. V.— 20.

306 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS

haps to distinguish it from the one above described, which is
specially called the 'Temple of the Lord.' " He moreover
informs us in his oriental history that "in the 'Temple of the
Lord' there is an abbot and canons regular; and be it known
that the one is the 'Temple of the Lord? and the other the
'Temple of the Chivalry.' These are clerks; the others are
knights"

The canons of the "Temple of the Lord" conceded to the
"Poor Fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ" the large court ex-
tending between that building and the Temple of Solomon;
the King, the Patriarch, and the prelates of Jerusalem, and the
barons of the Latin kingdom assigned them various gifts and
revenues for their maintenance and support, and, the order
being now settled in a regular place of abode, the knights soon
began to entertain more extended views and to seek a larger
theatre for the exercise of their holy profession.

Their first aim and object had been, as before mentioned,
simply to protect the poor pilgrims on their journey backward
and forward from the sea-coast to Jerusalem; but as the hos-
tile tribes of Mussulmans, which everywhere surrounded the
Latin kingdom, were gradually recovering from the stupefying
terror into which they had been plunged by the successful
and exterminating warfare of the first crusaders, and were
assuming an aggressive and threatening attitude, it was de-
termined that the holy warriors of the temple should, in ad-
dition to the protection of pilgrims, make the defence of the
Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, of the Eastern Church, and
of all the holy places a part of their particular profession.

The two most distinguished members of the fraternity
were Hugh de Payens and Geoffrey de St. Aldemar, or St.
Omer, two valiant soldiers of the cross, who had fought with
great credit and renown at the siege of Jerusalem. Hugh de
Payens was chosen by the knights to be superior of the new
religious and military society, by the title of "the Master of
the Temple"; and he has, in consequence, been generally
called the founder of the order.

The name and reputation of the Knights Templars speedily
spread throughout Europe, and various illustrious pilgrims
of the Far West aspired to become members of the holy f rater-

THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS 307

nity. Among these was Fulk, Count of Anjou, who joined
the society as a married brother (1120), and annually remitted
the order thirty pounds of silver. Baldwin, King of Jeru-
salem, foreseeing that great advantages would accrue to the
Latin kingdom by the increase of the power and numbers of
these holy warriors, exerted himself to extend the order through-
out all Christendom, so that he might, by means of so politic an
institution, keep alive the holy enthusiasm of the West, and
draw a constant succor from the bold and warlike races of
Europe for the support of his Christian throne and kingdom.

St. Bernard, the holy abbot of Clairvaux, had been a great
admirer of the Templars. He wrote a letter to the Count of
Champagne, on his entering the order (1123), praising the act
as one of eminent merit in the sight of God; and it was deter-
mined to enlist the all-powerful influence of this great ecclesias-
tic in favor of the fraternity. " By a vow of poverty and penance,
by closing his eyes against the visible world, by the refusal of
all ecclesiastical dignities, the abbot of Clairvaux became the
oracle of Europe and the founder of one hundred and sixty
convents. Princes and pontiffs trembled at the freedom of
his apostolical censures; France, England, and Milan con-
sulted and obeyed his judgment in a schism of the Church;
the debt was repaid by the gratitude of Innocent II; and his
successor, Eugenius III, was the friend and disciple of the
holy St. Bernard."

To this learned and devout prelate two Knights Templars
were despatched with the following letter:

"Baldwin, by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, King of
Jerusalem and Prince of Antioch, to the venerable Father
Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux; health and regard.

"The Brothers of the Temple, whom the Lord hath deigned
to raise up, and whom by an especial providence he preserves
for the defence of this kingdom, desiring to obtain from the
Holy See the confirmation of their institution and a rule for
their particular guidance, we have determined to send to you
the two knights, Andrew and Gondemar, men as much dis-
tinguished by their military exploits as by the splendor of their
birth, to obtain from the Pope the approbation of their order,
and to dispose his holiness to send succor and subsidies against

3o8 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS

the enemies of the faith, reunited in their design to destroy us
and to invade our Christian territories.

"Well knowing the weight of your mediation with God
and his vicar upon earth, as well as with the princes and powers
of Europe, we have thought fit to confide to you these two
important matters, whose successful issue cannot be otherwise
than most agreeable to ourselves. The statutes we ask of
you should be so ordered and arranged as to be reconcilable
with the tumult of the camp and the profession of arms; they
must, in fact, be of such a nature as to obtain favor and popu-
larity with the Christian princes.

"Do you then so manage that we may, through you, have
the happiness of seeing this important affair brought to a
successful issue, and address for us to Heaven the incense
of your prayers."

Soon after the above letter had been despatched to St.
Bernard, Hugh de Payens himself proceeded to Rome, accom-
panied by Geoffrey de St. Aldemar and four other brothers of
the order: namely, Brother Payen de Montdidier, Brothel
Gorall, Brother Geoffrey Bisol, and Brother Archambauld de
St. Armand. They were received with great honor and dis-
tinction by Pope Honorius, who warmly approved of the objects
and designs of the holy fraternity. St. Bernard had, in the
mean time, taken the affair greatly to heart; he negotiated
with the pope, the legate, and the bishops of France, and
obtained the convocation of a great ecclesiastical council at
Troyes (1128), which Hugh de Payens and his brethren were
invited to attend. This council consisted of several arch-
bishops, bishops, and abbots, among which last was St. Bernard
himself. The rules to which the Templars had subjected
themselves were there described by the master, and to the holy
abbot of Clairvaux was confided the task of revising and cor-
recting these rules, and of framing a code of statutes fit and
proper for the governance of the great religious and military
fraternity of the temple.

The Rule of the Poor Fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ and
0} the Temple of Solomon, arranged by St. Bernard, and sanc-
tioned by the holy Fathers of the Council of Troyes, for the
government and regulation of the monastic and military society

THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS 309

of the Temple, is principally of a religious character and of an
austere and gloomy cast. It is divided into seventy-two heads
or chapters, and is preceded by a short prologue addressed
"to all who disdain to follow after their own wills, and desire
with purity of mind to fight for the most high and true King,"
exhorting them to put on the armor of obedience, and to associate
themselves together with piety and humility for the defence of
the Holy Catholic Church ; and to employ a pure diligence, and
a steady perseverance in the exercise of their sacred profession,
so that they might share in the happy destiny reserved for the
holy warriors who had given up their lives for Christ.

The rule enjoins severe devotional exercises, self-morti-
fication, fasting, and prayer, and a constant attendance at
matins, vespers, and on all the services of the Church, "that,
being refreshed and satisfied with heavenly food, instructed
and stablished with heavenly precepts, after the consummation
of the divine mysteries," none might be afraid of the Fight, but
be prepared for the Crown.

If unable to attend the regular service of God, the absent
brother is for matins to say over thirteen pater-nosters, for every
hour seven, and for vespers nine. When any Templar draweth
nigh unto death, the chaplains and clerk are to assemble and
offer up a solemn mass for his soul; the surrounding brethren
are to spend the night in prayer, and a hundred pater-nosters
are to be repeated for the dead brother. "Moreover," say the
holy Fathers, "we do strictly enjoin you, that with divine and
most tender charity ye do daily bestow as much meat and drink
as was given to that brother when alive, unto some poor man
for forty days."

The brethren are, on all occasions, to speak sparingly and
to wear a grave and serious deportment. They are to be
constant in the exercise of charity and almsgiving, to have a
watchful care over all sick brethren, and to support and sus-
tain all old men. They are not to receive letters from their
parents, relations, or friends without the license of the master,
and all gifts are immediately to be taken to the latter or to the
treasurer, to be disposed of as he may direct. They are, more-
over, to receive no service or attendance from a woman, and
are commanded, above all things, to shun feminine kisses.

310 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS

"This same year (1128) Hugh of the Temple came from
Jerusalem to the King in Normandy, and the King received
him with much honor and gave him much treasure in gold and
silver, and afterward he sent him into England, and there he
was well received by all good men, and all gave him treasure,
and in Scotland also, and they sent in all a great sum in gold
and silver by him to Jerusalem, and there went with him and
after him so great a number as never before since the days of
Pope Urban." Grants of land, as well as of money, were at
the same time made to Hugh de Payens and his brethren, some
of which were shortly afterward confirmed by King Stephen
on his accession to the throne (1135). Among these is a grant
of the manor of Bistelesham made to the Templars by Count
Robert de Ferrara, and a grant of the Church of Langeforde
in Bedfordshire made by Simon de Wahull and Sibylla his
wife and Walter their son.

Hugh de Payens, before his departure, placed a Knight
Templar at the head of the order in England, who was called
the prior of the temple and was the procurator and viceregent
of the master. It was his duty to manage the estates granted
to the fraternity, and to transmit the revenues to Jerusalem.
He was also delegated with the power of admitting members
into the order, subject to the control and direction of the master,
and was to provide means of transport for such newly-admitted
brethren to the Far East, to enable them to fulfil the duties of
their profession. As the houses of the Temple increased in
number in England, subpriors came to be appointed, and the
superior of the order in this country was then called the " grand
prior," and afterward master, of the temple.

Many illustrious knights of the best families in Europe
aspired to the habit and vows, but, however exalted their rank,
they were not received within the bosom of the fraternity until
they had proved themselves by their conduct worthy of such a
fellowship. Thus, when Hugh d'Amboise, who had harassed
and oppressed the people of Marmontier by unjust exactions,
and had refused to submit to the judicial decision of the Count
of Anjou, desired to enter the order, Hugh de Payens refused
to admit him to the vows until he had humbled himself, re-
nounced his pretensions, and given perfect satisfaction to those

• THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS 311

whom he had injured. The candidates, moreover, previous
to their admission, were required to make reparation and sat-
isfaction for all damage done by them at any time to churches
and to public or private property.

An astonishing enthusiasm was excited throughout Chris-
tendom in behalf of the Templars; princes and nobles, sover-
eigns and their subjects, tied with each other in heaping gifts
and benefits upon them, and scarce a will of importance was
made without an article in it in their favor. Many illustrious
persons on their death-beds took the vows, that they might be
buried in the habit of the order; and sovereigns, quitting the
government of their kingdoms, enrolled themselves among
the holy fraternity, and bequeathed even their dominions to the
master and the brethren of the temple.

Thus, Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona and Provence,
at a very advanced age, abdicating his throne and shaking off
the ensigns of royal authority, retired to the house of the Tem-
plars at Barcelona, and pronounced his vows (1130) before
Brother Hugh de Rigauld, the prior. His infirmities not
allowing him to proceed in person to the chief house of the
order at Jerusalem, he sent vast sums of money thither, and
immuring himself in a small cell in the temple at Barcelona,
he there remained in the constant exercise of the religious
duties of his profession until the day of his death.

At the same period, the emperor Lothair bestowed on the
order a large portion of his patrimony of Supplinburg; and
the year following (1131), Alphonso I, King of Navarre and
Aragon, also styled Emperor of Spain, one of the greatest
warriors of the age, by his will declared the Knights of the
Temple his heirs and successors in the crowns of Navarre and
Aragon, and a few hours before his death he caused this will to
be ratified and signed by most of the barons of both kingdoms.
The validity of this document, however, was disputed, and
the claims of the Templars were successfully resisted by the
nobles of Navarre; but in Aragon they obtained, by way of
compromise, lands and castles and considerable dependencies,
a portion of the customs and duties levied throughout the
kingdom, and the contributions raised from the Moors.

To increase the enthusiasm in favor of the Templars, and

THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS

still further to swell their ranks with the best and bravest of
the European chivalry, St. Bernard, at the request of Hugh de
Payens, took up his powerful pen in their behalf. In a famous
discourse, In Praise of the New Chivalry, the holy abbot sets
forth, in eloquent and enthusiastic terms, the spiritual ad-
vantages and blessings enjoyed by the military friars of the
temple over all other warriors. He draws a curious picture of
the relative situations and circumstances of the secular soldiery
and the soldiery of Christ, and shows how different in the sight
of God are the bloodshed and slaughter of the one from that
committed by the other.

This extraordinary discourse is written with great spirit;
it is addressed "To Hugh, Knight of Christ, and Master of the
Knighthood of Christ," is divided into fourteen parts or chap-
ters, and commences with a short prologue. It is curiously
illustrative of the spirit of the times, and some of its most strik-
ing passages will be read with interest.

The holy abbot thus pursues his comparison between the
soldier of the world and the soldier of Christ — the secular and
the religious warrior: "As often as thou who wagest a secular
warfare marchest forth to battle, it is greatly to be feared lest
when thou slayest thine enemy in the body, he should destroy
thee in the spirit, or lest peradventure thou shouldst be at once
slain by him both in body and soul. From the disposition of
the heart, indeed, not by the event of the fight, is to be estimated
either the jeopardy or the victory of the Christian. If, fight-
ing with the desire of killing another, thou shouldst chance to
get killed thyself, thou diest a manslayer; if, on the other hand,
thou prevailest, and through a desire of conquest or revenge
killest a man, thou livest a manslayer. ... O unfortunate
victory! when in overcoming thine adversary thou fallest into
sin, and, anger or pride having the mastery over thee, in vain
thou gloriest over the vanquished. . . .

"What, therefore, is the fruit of this secular, I will not say
militia, but malitia, if the slayer committeth a deadly sin, and
the slain perisheth eternally? Verily, to use the words of the
apostle, he that plougheth should plough in hope, and he that
thresheth should be partaker of his hope. Whence, therefore,
O soldiers, cometh this so stupendous error? What insuffer-

THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS 313

able madness is this — to wage war with so great cost and
labor, but with no pay except either death or crime? Ye
cover your horses with silken trappings, and I know not how
much fine cloth hangs pendent from your coats of mail. Ye
paint your spears, shields, and saddles; your bridles and spurs
are adorned on all sides with gold and silver and gems, and
with all this pomp, with a shameful fury and a reckless insensi-
bility, ye rush on to death. Are these military ensigns, or are
they not rather the garnishments of women? Can it happen
that the sharp-pointed sword of the enemy will respect gold,
will it spare gems, will it be unable to penetrate the silken
garment ?

"As ye yourselves have oftened experienced, three things
are indispensably necessary to the success of the soldier: he
must, for example, be bold, active, and circumspect; quick
in running, prompt in striking; ye, however, to the disgust of
the eye, nourish your hair after the manner of women, ye gather
around your footsteps long and flowing vestures, ye bury up
your delicate and tender hands in ample and wide-spreading
sleeves. Among you indeed naught provoketh war or awaken-
eth strife, but either an irrational impulse of anger or an insane
lust of glory or the covetous desire of possessing another man's
lands and possessions. In such cases it is neither safe to slay
nor to be slain. . . . But the soldiers of Christ indeed se-
curely fight the battles of their Lord, in no wise fearing sin,
either from the slaughter of the enemy or danger from their
own death. When indeed death is to be given or received for
Christ, it has naught of crime in it, but much of glory. . . .

"And now for an example, or to the confusion of our
soldiers fighting not manifestly for God, but for the devil, we
will briefly display the mode of life of the Knights of Christ,
such as it is in the field and in the convent, by which means it
will be made plainly manifest to what extent the soldiery of God
and the soldiery of the World differ from one another. . . .
The soldiers of Christ live together in common in an agreeable
but frugal manner, without wives and without children; and
that nothing may be wanting to evangelical perfection, they
dwell together without property of any kind, in one house,
under one rule, careful to preserve the unity of the spirit in the

3i4 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS

bond of peace. You may say that to the whole multitude there
is but one heart and one soul, as each one in no respect followeth
after his own will or desire, but is diligent to do the will of the
Master. They are never idle nor rambling abroad, but, when
they are not in the field, that they may not eat their bread in
idleness, they are fitting and repairing their armor and their
clothing, or employing themselves in such occupations as the
will of the Master requireth or their common necessities render
expedient. Among them there is no distinction of persons;
respect is paid to the best and most virtuous, not the most
noble. They participate in each other's honor, they bear one
another's burdens, that they may fulfil the law of Christ.

"An insolent expression, a useless undertaking, immoderate
laughter, the least murmur or whispering, if found out, passeth
not without severe rebuke. They detest cards and dice, they
shun the sports of the field, and take no delight in the ludicrous
catching of birds (hawking), which men are wont to indulge in.
Jesters and soothsayers and story-tellers, scurrilous songs,
shows, and games, they contemptuously despise and abominate
as vanities and mad follies. They cut their hair, knowing
that, according to the apostle, it is not seemly in a man to
have long hair. They are never combed, seldom washed,
but appear rather with rough neglected hair, foul with dust,
and with skins browned by the sun and their coats of mail.

"Moreover, on the approach of battle they fortify them-
selves with faith within and with steel without, and not with
gold, so that, armed and not adorned, they may strike terror
into the enemy, rather than awaken his lust of plunder. They
strive earnestly to possess strong and swift horses, but not
garnished with ornaments or decked with trappings, thinking
of battle and of victory, and not of pomp and show, studying
to inspire fear rather than admiration. . . .

"Such hath God chosen for his own, and hath collected
together as his ministers from the ends of the earth, from among
the bravest of Israel, who indeed vigilantly and faithfully
guard the Holy Sepulchre, all armed with the sword, and most
learned in the art of war. . . .

"There is indeed a temple at Jerusalem in which they
dwell together, unequal, it is true, as a building, to that ancient

THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS 315

and most famous one of Solomon, but not inferior in glory.
For truly the entire magnificence of that consisted in corrupt
things, in gold and silver, in carved stone, and in a variety of
woods; but the whole beauty of this resteth in the adornment
of an agreeable conversation, in the godly devotion of its in-
mates, and their beautifully ordered mode of life. That was
admired for its various external beauties, this is venerated for
its different virtues and sacred actions, as becomes the sanctity
of the house of God, who delighteth not so much in polished
marbles as in well-ordered behavior, and regardeth pure minds
more than gilded walls. The face likewise of this temple
is adorned with arms, not with gems, and the wall, instead of
the ancient golden chapiters, is covered around with pendent
shields.

"Instead of the ancient candelabra, censers, and lavers,
the house is on all sides furnished with bridles, saddles, and
lances, all which plainly demonstrate that the soldiers burn
with the same zeal for the house of God as that which formerly
animated their great Leader, when, vehemently enraged, he
entered into the Temple, and with that most sacred hand,
armed not with steel, but with a scourge which he had made
of small thongs, drove out the merchants, poured out the chang-
ers' money, and overthrew the tables of them that sold doves;
most indignantly condemning the pollution of the house of
prayer by the making of it a place of merchandise.

"The devout army of Christ, therefore, earnestly incited
by the example of its king, thinking indeed that the holy places
are much more impiously and insufferably polluted by the
infidels than when defiled by merchants, abide hi the holy house
with horses and with arms, so that from that, as well as all the
other sacred places, all filthy and diabolical madness of infi-
delity being driven out, they may occupy themselves by day and
by night in honorable and useful offices. They emulously
honor the temple of God with sedulous and sincere oblations,
offering sacrifices therein with constant devotion, not indeed
of the flesh of cattle after the manner of the ancients, but
peaceful sacrifices, brotherly love, devout obedience, voluntary
poverty.

"These things are done perpetually at Jerusalem, and the

316 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS

world is aroused, the islands hear, and the nations take heed
from afar. . . ."

St. Bernard then congratulates Jerusalem on the advent
of the soldiers of Christ, and declares that the Holy City will
rejoice with a double joy in being rid of all her oppressors, the
ungodly, the robbers, the blasphemers, murderers, perjurers,
and adulterers; and in receiving her faithful defenders and
sweet consolers, under the shadow of whose protection "Mount
Zion shall rejoice, and the daughters of Judah sing for joy."

STEPHEN USURPS THE ENGLISH CROWN

HIS CONFLICTS WITH MATILDA: DECISIVE
INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH

A.D. 1135-1154

CHARLES KNIGHT

William the Conqueror, King of England, was succeeded by his sons
William Rufus and Henry — on account of his scholarship known as
Beauclerc. Prince William, Henry's only son, was drowned when
starting from Normandy for England in 1120. In the absence of male
issue Henry settled the English and Norman crowns upon his
daughter Matilda, and demanded an oath of fidelity to her from the
barons.

Matilda had been married first to Emperor Henry V of Germany,
who died in 1125, and secondly to Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of An-
jou.

Stephen was the son of Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror,
who had married Stephen, Count of Blois. Stephen, with his brother
Henry, had been invited to the court of England by their uncle, and had
received honors, preferments, and riches. Henry becoming an ecclesiast
was created abbot of Glastonbury and bishop of Winchester. Stephen,
among other possessions, received the great estate forfeited by Robert
Mallet in England, and that forfeited by the Earl of Mortaigne in Nor-
mandy. By his marriage with Matilda, daughter of the Earl of Bou-
logne, he had succeeded also to the territories of his father-in-law. Ste-
phen by studied arts and personal qualities became a great favorite with
the English barons and the people.

The empress Matilda and her husband Geoffrey, unfortunately, were
unpopular both in England and Normandy, the English barons espe-
cially viewing with disfavor the prospect of a woman occupying the
throne.

Henry Beauclerc died in 1135 at his favorite hunting-seat, the Castle
of Lions, near Rouen, in Normandy. Stephen, ignoring the oath of
fealty to the daughter of his benefactor, hastened to England, and, not-
withstanding some opposition, with the help of his clerical brother and
other functionaries had himself proclaimed and crowned king. This act

317

3i8 USURPATION OF STEPHEN

involved England in years of civfl \? ar, anarchy, and wretchedness, which
ended only with the accession as Henry II of Empress Matilda's son,
Henry Plantagenet of Anjou.

/^\F the reign of Stephen, Sir James Mackintosh has said, "It
perhaps contains the most perfect condensation of all the
ills of feudality to be found in history." He adds, "The whole
narrative would have been rejected, as devoid of all likeness to
truth, if it had been hazarded in fiction." As a picture of "all
the ills of feudality," this narrative is a picture of the entire
social state — the monarchy, the Church, the aristocracy, the
people — and appears to us, therefore, to demand a more careful
examination than if the historical interest were chiefly centred
in the battles and adventures belonging to a disputed succes-
sion, and in the personal characters of a courageous princess
and her knightly rival.

Stephen, Earl of Boulogne, the nephew of King Henry I,
was no stranger to the country which he aspired to rule. He had
lived much in England and was a universal favorite. "From
his complacency of manners, and his readiness to joke, and sit
and regale even with low people, he had gained so much on
their affections as is hardly to be conceived." This popular
man was at the death-bed of his uncle; but before the royal
body was borne on the shoulders of nobles from the Castle of
Lions to Rouen, Stephen was on his road to England. He
embarked at Whitsand, undeterred by boisterous weather, and
landed during a winter storm of thunder and lightning. It was
a more evil omen when Dover and Canterbury shut their gates
against him. But he went boldly on to London. There can be
no doubt that his proceedings were not the result of a sudden
impulse, and that his usurpation of the crown was successful
through a very powerful organization. His brother Henry was
Bishop of Winchester; and his influence with the other digni-
taries of the Church was mainly instrumental in the election of
Stephen to be king, in open disregard of the oaths taken a few
years before to recognize the succession of Matilda and of her
son. Between the death of a king and the coronation of his
successor there was usually a short interval, in which the form
of election was gone through. But it is held that during that
suspension of the royal functions there was usually a proclama-

USURPATION OF STEPHEN 319

tion of "the king's peace," under which all violations of law
were punished as if the head of the law were in the full exercise
of his functions and dignities. King Henry I died on the ist of
December, 1135. Stephen was crowned on the 26th of Decem-
ber. The death of Henry would probably have been generally
known in England in a week after the event. There is a suffi-
cient proof that this succession was considered doubtful, and,
consequently, that there was an unusual delay in the proclama-
tion of "the king's peace." The Forest Laws were the great
grievance of Henry's reign. His death was the signal for their
violation by the whole body of the people. "It was wonderful
how so many myriads of wild animals, which in large herds
before plentifully stocked the country, suddenly disappeared,
so that out of the vast number scarcely two now could be found
together. They seemed to be entirely extirpated." Accord-
ing to the same authority, "the people also turned to plunder-
ing each other without mercy"; and "whatever the evil pas-
sions suggested in peaceable times, now that the opportunity of
vengeance presented itself, was quickly executed." This is a
remarkable condition of a country which, having been gov-
erned by terror, suddenly passed out of the evils of despotism
into the greater evils of anarchy. This temporary confusion
must have contributed to urge on the election of Stephen. By
the Londoners he was received with acclamations; and the witan
chose him for king without hesitation, as one who could best
fulfil the duties of the office and put an end to the dangers of
the kingdom.

Stephen succeeded to a vast amount of treasure. All the
rents of Henry I had been paid in money, instead of in neces-
saries; and he was rigid in enforcing the payment in coin of the
best quality. With this possession of means, Stephen sur-
rounded himself with troops from Flanders and Brittany. The
objections to his want of hereditary right appear to have been
altogether laid aside for a time, in the popularity which he de-
rived from his personal qualities and his command of wealth.
Strict hereditary claims to the choice of the nation had been
disregarded since the time of the Confessor. The oath to Ma-
tilda, it was maintained, had been unwillingly given, and even
extorted by force. It is easy to conceive that, both to Saxon

320 USURPATION OF STEPHEN

and Norman, the notion of a female sovereign would be out of
harmony with their ancient traditions and their warlike habits.
The kmg was the great military chief, as well as the supreme
dispenser of justice and guardian of property. The time was
far distant when the sovereign rule might be held to be most
beneficially exercised by a wise choice of administrators, civil
and military; and the power of the crown, being coordinate
with other powers, strengthening as well as controlling its final
authority, might be safely and happily exercised by a discreet,
energetic, and just female. King Stephen vindicated the choice
of the nation at the very outset of his reign. He went in person
against the robbers who were ravaging the country. The
daughter of "the Lion of Justice" would probably have done
the same. But more than three hundred years had passed since
the Lady of Mercia, the sister of Alfred, had asserted the cour-
age of her race. Norman and Saxon wanted a king; for though
ladies defended castles, and showed that firmness and bravery
were not the exclusive possession of one sex, no thane or baron
had yet knelt before a queen, and sworn to be her "liege man
of life and limb."

The unanimity which appeared to hail the accession of
Stephen was soon interrupted. David, King of Scotland, had
advanced to Carlisle and Newcastle, to assert the claim of
Matilda which he had sworn to uphold. But Stephen came
against him with a great army, and for a time there was peace.
Robert, Earl of Gloucester, the illegitimate son of Henry I, had
done homage to Stephen; but his allegiance was very doubtful;
and the general belief that he would renounce his fealty engen-
dered secret hostility or open resistance among other powerful
barons. Robert of Gloucester very soon defied the King's
power. Within two years of his accession the throne of Ste-
phen was evidently becoming an insecure seat. To counteract
the power of the great nobles, he made a lavish distribution of
crown lands to a large number of tenants-in-chief. Some of
them were called earls; but they had no official charge, as the
greater barons had, but were mere titular lords, made by the
royal bounty. All those who held direct from the Crown were
called barons; and these new barons, who were scattered over the
country, had permission from the King to build castles. Such

USURPATION OF STEPHEN 321

permission was extended to many other lay barons. The ac-
customed manor-house of the land proprietor, in which he
dwelt amid the churls and serfs of his demesne, was now replaced
by a stone tower, surrounded by a moat and a wall. The wooden
one-storied homestead, with its thatched roof, shaded by the
"toft" of ash and elm and maple, was pulled down, and a
square fortress with loopholes and battlement stood in solitary
nakedness upon some bleak hill, ugly and defiant. There with
a band of armed men — sometimes with a wife and children,
and not unfrequently with an unhappy victim of his licentious-
ness — the baron lived in gloom and gluttony, till the love of
excitement, the approach of want, or the call to battle drove
him forth. His passion for hunting was not always free to be
exercised. Venison was not everywhere to be obtained without
danger even to the powerful and lawless. But within a ride of
a few miles there was generally corn in the barns and herds were
in the pastures. The petty baron was almost invariably a rob-
ber — sometimes on his own account, often in some combined
adventure of plunder. The spirit of rapine, always too preva-
lent under the strongest government of those times, was now
universal when the government was fighting for its own exist-
ence. Bands of marauders sallied forth from the great towns,
especially from Bristol; and of their proceedings the author of
the Gesta Stephani speaks with the precision of an eye-witness.
The Bristolians, under the instigation of the Earl of Gloucester,
were partisans of the ex-empress Matilda; and wherever the
King or his adherents had estates they came to seize their oxen
and sheep, and carried men of substance into Bristol as cap-
tives, with bandaged eyes and bits in their mouths. From
other towns as well as Bristol came forth plunderers, with
humble gait and courteous discourse; who, when they met with
a lonely man having the appearance of being wealthy, would
bear him off to starvation and torture, till they had mulcted
him to the last farthing. These and other indications of an
unsettled government took place before the landing of Ma-
tilda to assert her claims. An invasion of England, by the
Scottish King, without regard to the previous pacification, was
made in 1138. But this attempt, although grounded upon the
oath which David had sworn to Henry, was regarded by the

E., VOL. V.—21.

322 USURPATION OF STEPHEN

Northumbrians as a national hostility which demanded a na-
tional resistance. The course of this invasion has been mi-
nutely described by contemporary chroniclers.

The author of the Gesta Stephani says : " Scotland, also called
Albany, is a country overspread by extensive moors, but con-
taining flourishing woods and pastures, which feed large herds
of cows and cxen." Of the mountainous regions he says noth-
ing. Describing the natives as savage, swift of foot, and lightly
armed, he adds, "A confused multitude of this people being as
sembled from the lowlands of Scotland, they were formed into an
irregular army and marched for England." From the period of
the Conquest, a large number of Anglo-Saxons had been settled
in the lowlands; and the border countries of Westmoreland and
Cumberland were also occupied, to a considerable extent, by
the same race. The people of Galloway were chiefly of the
original British stock. The historians describe "the confused
multitude" as exercising great cruelties in their advance through
the country that lies between the Tweed and the Tees; and
Matthew Paris uses a significant phrase which marks how com-
pletely they spread over the land. He calls them the " Scottish
Ants." The Archbishop of York, Thurstan, an aged but vigor-
ous man, collected a large army to resist the invaders; and he
made a politic appeal to the old English nationality, by calling
out the population under the banners of their Saxon saints.
The Bishop of Durham was the leader of this army, composed
of the Norman chivalry and the English archers. The oppos-
ing forces met at Northallerton, on the 22d of August, 1138.
The Anglo-Norman army was gathered round a tall cross, raised
on a car, and surrounded by the banners of St. Cuthbert and
St. Wilfred and St. John of Beverley. From this incident
the bloody day of Northallerton was called " the Battle of the
Standard." Hoveden has given an oration made by Ralph,
Bishop of Durham, in which he addresses the captains as
"Brave nobles of England, Normans by birth"; and pointing
to the enemy, who knew not the use of armor, exclaims, "Your
head is covered with the helmet, your breast with a coat of mail,
your legs with greaves, and your whole body with the shield."
Of the Saxon yeomanry he says nothing. Whether the oration
be genuine or not, it exhibits the mode in which the mass of the

323

people were regarded at that time. Thierry appears to consider
that the bold attempt of David of Scotland was made in reliance
upon the support of the Anglo-Saxon race. But it is perfectly
clear that they bore the brunt of the English battle; and what-
ever might be their wrongs, were not disposed to yield their
fields and houses to a fierce multitude who came for spoil and
for possession. The Scotch fought with darts and long spears,
and attacked the solid mass of Normans and English gathered
round the standard. Prince Henry, the son of the King of
Scotland, made a vigorous onslaught with a body of horse, com-
posed of English and Normans attached to his father's house-
hold. These were, without doubt, especial partisans of the
claim to the English crown of the ex-empress Matilda; and,
as the King of Scotland himself is described, were "inflamed
with zeal for a just cause." ' The issue of the battle was the
signal defeat of the Scottish army, with the loss of eleven thou-
sand men upon the field. A peace was concluded with King
Stephen in the following year.

The issue of the battle of the Standard might have given rest
to England if Stephen had understood the spirit of his age.
In 1139 he engaged hi a contest more full of peril than the as-
saults of Scotland or the disturbances of Wales. He had been
successful against some of the disaffected barons. He had
besieged and taken Hereford Castle and Shrewsbury Castle.
Dover Castle had surrendered to his Queen. Robert, Earl of
Gloucester, kept possession of the castles of Bristol and Leeds;
and other nobles held out against him in various strong places.
London and some of the larger towns appear to have steadily
clung to his government. The influence of the Church, by
which he had been chiefly raised to sovereignty, had supported
him during his four years of struggle. But that influence was
now to be shaken.

The rapid and steady growth of the ecclesiastical power in

1 Scott has given a picturesque account of the battle in his Tales of a
Grandfather. Writing, as he often did, from general impressions, in
describing the gallant charge of Prince Henry, he states that he broke
the English line " as if it had been a spider's web." Hoveden, the his-
torian to whom Scott alludes, applies this strong image to the scattering
of the men of Lothian : " For the Almighty was offended at them, and
their strength was rent like a cobweb,"

324 USURPATION OF STEPHEN

England, from the period of the Conquest, is one of the most
remarkable characteristics of that age. This progress we must
steadily keep in view if we would rightly understand the gen-
eral condition of society. All the great offices of the Church,
with scarcely an exception, were filled by Normans. The
Conqueror sternly resisted any attempts of bishops or abbots
to control his civil government. The "Red King" misappro-
priated their revenues in many cases. Henry I quarrelled with
Anselm about the right of investiture, which the Pope declared
should not be in the hands of any layman, but Henry compro-
mised a difficult question with his usual prudence. Whatever
difficulties the Church encountered, during seventy years, and
especially during the whole course of Henry's reign, wealth
flowed in upon the ecclesiastics, from king and noble, from
burgess and socman; and every improvement of the country
increased the value of church possessions. It was not only
from the lands of the Crown and the manors of earls that bish-
oprics and monasteries derived their large endowments. Henry
I founded the Abbey of Reading, but the mimus of Henry
I built the priory and hospital of St. Bartholomew. This
" pleasant- witted gentleman," as Stow calls the royal mimus
(which Percy interprets "minstrel"), having, according to the
legend, " diverted the palaces of princes with courtly mockeries
and triflings" for many years, bethought himself at last of more
serious matters, and went to do penance at Rome. He returned
to London; and obtaining a grant of land in a part of the King's
market of Smithfield, which was a filthy marsh where the com-
mon gallows stood, there erected the priory, whose Norman
arches as satisfactorily attest its date as Henry's charter. The
piety of a court jester in the twelfth century, when the science
of medicine was wholly empirical, founded one of the most
valuable medical schools of the nineteenth century. The desire
to raise up splendid churches in the place of the dilapidated
Saxon buildings was a passion with Normans, whether clerics
or laymen. Ralph Flambard, the bold and unscrupulous min-
ister of William II, erected the great priory of Christchurch, in
his capacity of bishop. But he raised the necessary funds with
his usual financial vigor. He took the revenues of the canons into
his hands, and put the canons upon a short allowance till the

USURPATION OF STEPHEN 325

work was completed. The Cistercian order of monks was
established in England late in the reign of Henry I. Their rule
was one of the most severe mortification and of the strictest
discipline. Their lives were spent in labor and in prayer, and
their one frugal daily meal was eaten in silence. While other
religious orders had their splendid abbeys amid large commu-
nities, the Cistercians humbly asked grants of land in the most
solitary places, where the recluse could meditate without inter-
ruption by his fellow-men, amid desolate moors and in the un-
cultivated gorges of inaccessible mountains. In such a barren
district Walter 1'Espee, who had fought at Northallerton,
founded Rievaulx Abbey. It was "a solitary place hi Blake-
more," in the midst of hills. The Norman knight had lost his
son, and here he derived a holy comfort in seeing the monastic
buildings rise under his munificent care, and the waste lands
become fertile under the incessant labors of the devoted monks.
The ruins of Tintern Abbey and Melrose Abbey, whose solemn
influences have inspired the poets of our own age with thoughts
akin to the contemplations of their Cistercian founders, belong
to a later period of ecclesiastical architecture; for the dwellings
of the original monks have perished, and the "broken arches,"
and "shafted oriel," the "imagery," and "the scrolls that teach
thee to live and die," speak of another century, when the Nor-
man architecture, like the Norman character, was losing its
distinctive features and becoming "Early English." We
dwell a little upon these Norman foundations, to show how
completely the Church was spreading itself over the land, and
asserting its influence in places where man had seldom trod, as
well as in populous towns, where the great cathedral was
crowded with earnest votaries, and the lessons of peace were
proclaimed amid the distractions of unsettled government and
the oppressions of lordly despotism. Whatever was the misery
of the country, the ordinary family ties still bound the people to
the universal Christian church, whether the priest were Norman
or English. The new-born infant was dipped in the great Nor-
man font, as the children of the Confessor's time had been
dipped in the ruder Saxon. The same Latin office, unintelli-
gible in words, but significant in its import, was said and sung
when the bride stood at the altar and the father was laid in his

326 USURPATION OF STEPHEN

grave. The vernacular tongue gradually melted into one dialect ;
and the penitent and the confessor were the first to lay aside the
great distinction of race and country — that of language.

The Norman prelates were men of learning and ability, of
taste and magnificence; and, whatever might have been the
luxury and even vices of some among them, the vast revenues
of the great sees were not wholly devoted to worldly pomp, but
were applied to noble uses. After the lapse of seven centuries
we still tread with reverence those portions of our cathedrals in
which the early Norman architecture is manifest. There is no
Engh'sh cathedral in which we are so completely impressed with
the massive grandeur of the round-arched style as by Durham.
Durham Cathedral was commenced in the middle of the reign
of Rufus, and the building went on through the reign of Henry
I. Canterbury was commenced by Archbishop Lanfranc, soon
after the Conquest, and was enlarged and altered in various
details, till it was burned in 1174. Some portions of the original
building remain. Rochester was commenced eleven years af-
ter the Conquest; and its present nave is an unaltered part of
the original building. Chichester has nearly the same date of
its commencement; and the building of this church was con-
tinued till its dedication in 1 148. Norwich was founded in 1094,
and its erection was carried forward so rapidly that in seven
years there were sixty monks here located. Winchester is one
of the earliest of these noble cathedrals; but its Norman feature
of the round arch is not the general characteristic of the edifice,
the original piers having been recased in the pointed style, in
the reign of Edward III. The dates of these buildings, so
grand in their conception, so solid in their execution, would be
sufficient of themselves to show the wealth and activity of the
Church during the reigns of the Conqueror and his sons. But,
during this period of seventy years, and in part of the reign of
Stephen, the erection of monastic buildings was universal in
England, as in Continental Europe. The crusades gave a most
powerful impulse to the religious fervor. In the enthusiasm of
chivalry, which covered many of its enormities with outward
acts of piety, vows were frequently made by wealthy nobies that
they would depart for the Holy Wars. But sometimes the vow
was inconvenient. The lady of the castle wept at the almost

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certain perils of her lord, and his projects of ambition often
kept the lord at home to look after his own especial interests.
Then the vow to wear the cross might be commuted by the
foundation of a religious house. Death-bed repentance for
crimes of violence and a licentious life increased the number of
these endowments. It has been computed that three hundred
monastic establishments were founded in England during the
reigns of Henry I, Stephen, and Henry 13.

We have briefly stated these few general facts regarding the
outward manifestation of the power and the wealth of the
Church at this period, to show how important an influence it
must have exercised upon all questions of government. But
its organization was of far greater importance than the aggre-
gate wealth of the sees and abbeys. The English Church, during
the troubled reign of Stephen, had become more completely
under the papal dominion than at any previous period of its
history. The King attempted, rashly perhaps, but honestly, to
interpose some check to the ecclesiastical desire for supremacy;
but from the hour when he entered into a contest with bishops
and synods, his reign became one of kingly trouble and national
misery.

The Norman bishops not only combined in their own persons
the functions of the priest and of the lawyer, but were often
military leaders. As barons they had knight-service to per-
form; and this condition of their tenures naturally surrounded
them with armed retainers. That this anomalous position
should have corrupted the ambitious churchman into a proud
and luxurious lord was almost inevitable. The authority of the
Crown might have been strong enough to repress the individual
discontent, or to punish the individual treason, of these great
prelates; but every one of them was doubly formidable as a
member of a confederacy over which a foreign head claimed to
preside. There were three bishops whose intrigues King Ste-
phen had especially to dread at the time when an open war
for the succession of Matilda was on the point of bursting forth.
Roger, the Bishop of Salisbury, had been promoted from the
condition of a parish priest at Caen, to be chaplain, secretary,
chancellor, and chief justiciary of Henry I. He was instrumen-
tal in the election of Stephen to the throne ; and he was rewarded

328 USURPATION OF STEPHEN

with extravagant gifts, as he had been previously rewarded by
Henry. Stephen appears to have fostered his rapacity, in the
conviction that his pride would have a speedier fall; the King
often saying, "I would give him half England, if he asked for it:
till the time be ripe he shall tire of asking ere I tire of giving."
The time was ripe in 1139. The Bishop had erected castles at
Devizes, at Sherborne, and at Malmesbury. King Henry had
given him the castle of Salisbury. This lord of four castles had
powerful auxiliaries in his nephews, the Bishop of Lincoln and
the Bishop of Ely. Alexander of Lincoln had built the castles
of Newark and Sleaford, and was almost as powerful as his
uncle. In July, 1139, a great council was held at Oxford; and
thither came these three bishops with military and secular
pomp, and with an escort that became "the wonder of all be-
holders." A quarrel ensued between the retainers of the bish-
ops and those of Alain, Earl of Brittany, about a right to quar-
ters; and the quarrel went on to a battle, in which men were
slain on both sides. The bishops of Salisbury and Lincoln
were arrested, as breakers of the king's peace. The Bishop of
Ely fled to his uncle's castle of Devizes. The King, under the
advice of the sagacious Earl Millent, resolved to dispossess these
dangerous prelates of their fortresses, which were all finally
surrendered. "The bishops, humbled and mortified, and
stripped of all pomp and vainglory, were reduced to a simple
ecclesiastical life, and to the possessions belonging to them as
churchmen." The contemporary who writes this — the au-
thor of the Gesta Stephani — although a decided partisan of
Stephen, speaks of this event as the result of mad counsels, and
a grievous sin that resembled the wickedness of the sons of
Korah and of Saul. The great body of the ecclesiastics were
indignant at what they considered an offence to their order.
The Bishop of Winchester, the brother of Stephen, had become
the Pope's legate in England, and he summoned the King to
attend a synod at Winchester. He there produced his authority
as legate from Pope Innocent, and denounced the arrest of the
bishops as a dreadful crime. The King had refused to attend
the council, but he sent Alberic de Vere, " a man deeply versed
in legal affairs," to represent him. This advocate urged that
the Bishop of Lincoln was the author of the tumult at Oxford;

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that whenever Bishop Roger came to court, his people, presum-
ing on his power, excited tumults; that the Bishop secretly
favored the King's enemies, and was ready to join the party of
the Empress. The council was adjourned, but on a subse-
quent day came the Archbishop of Rouen, as the champion of
the King, and contended that it was against the canons that the
bishops should possess castles; and that even if they had the
right, they were bound to deliver them up to the will of the
King, as the times were eventful, and the King was bound to
make war for the common security. The Archbishop of Rouen
reasoned as a statesman; the Bishop of Winchester as the
Pope's legate. Some of the bishops threatened to proceed to
Rome; and the King's advocate intimated that if they did so,
their return might not be so easy. Swords were at last un-
sheathed. The King and the earls were now in open hostility
with the legate and the bishops. Excommunication of the King
was hinted at; but persuasion was resorted to. Stephen, ac-
cording to one authority, made humble submission, and thus
" abated the rigor of ecclesiastical discipline." If he did submit,
his submission was too late. Within a month Earl Robert and
the empress Matilda were in England.

Matilda and the Earl of Gloucester landed at Arundel,
where the widow of Henry I was dwelling. They had a very
small force to support their pretensions. The Earl crossed the
country to Bristol. "All England was struck with alarm, and
men's minds were agitated in various ways. Those who secretly
or openly favored the invaders were roused to more than usual
activity against the King, while his own partisans were terrified
as if a thunderbolt had fallen." Stephen invested the castle of
Arundel. But in the most romantic spirit of chivalry he per-
mitted the Empress to pass out, and to set forward to join her
brother at Bristol, under a safe-conduct. In. 1140 the whole
kingdom appears to have been subjected to the horrors of a
partisan warfare. The barons in their castles were making a
show of "defending their neighborhoods, but, more properly
to speak, were laying them waste." The legate and the bishops
were excommunicating the plunderers of churches, but the
plunderers laughed at their anathemas. Freebooters came over
from Flanders, not to practise the industrial arts as in the time

330 USURPATION OF STEPHEN

of Henry I, but to take their part in the general pillage. There
was frightful scarcity in the country, and the ordinary inter-
change of man with man was unsettled by the debasement of
the coin. "All things," says Malmesbury, "became venial in
England; and churches and abbeys were no longer secretly but
even publicly exposed to sale." All things become venial, under
a government too weak to repress plunder or to punish corrup-
tion. The strong aim to be rich by rapine, and the cunning by
fraud, when the confusion of a kingdom is grown so great that,
as is recorded of this period, "the neighbor could put no faith
in his nearest neighbor, nor the friend in his friend, nor the
brother in his own brother." The demoralization of anarchy
is even more terrible than its bloodshed.

The marches and sieges, the revolts and treacheries, of this
evil time are occasionally varied by incidents which illustrate
the state of society. Robert Fitz-Herbert, with a detachment of
the Earl of Gloucester's soldiers, surprised the castle of Devizes,
which the King had taken from the Bishop of Salisbury. Robert
Fitz-Herbert varies the atrocities of his fellow-barons, by rub-
bing his prisoners with honey, and exposing them naked to the
sun. But Robert, having obtained Devizes, refused to admit
the Earl of Gloucester to any advantage of its possession, and
commenced the subjection of the neighborhood on his own
account. Another crafty baron, John Fitz-Gilbert, held the
castle of Marlborough; and Robert Fitz-Herbert, having an
anxious desire to be lord of that castle also, endeavoring to
cajole Fitz-Gilbert into the admission of his followers, went
there as a guest, but was detained as a prisoner. Upon this the
Earl of Gloucester came in force for revenge against his treach-
erous ally, Fitz-Herbert, and, conducting him to Devizes, there
hanged him. The surprise of Lincoln Castle, upon which the
events of 1141 mainly turned, is equally characteristic of the
age. Ranulf, Earl of Chester, and William de Roumare, his
half-brother, were avowed friends of King Stephen. But their
ambition took a new direction for the support of Matilda. The
garrison of Lincoln had no apprehension of a surprise, and were
busy in those sports which hardy men enjoy even amid the
rougher sport of war. The Countess of Chester and her sister-
in-law, with a politeness that the ladies of the court of Louis le

USURPATION OF STEPHEN 331

Grand could not excel, paid a visit to the wife of the knight who
had the defence of the castle. While there, at this pleasant
morning call, "talking and joking" with the unsuspecting ma-
tron, as Ordericus relates, the Earl of Chester came in, "with-
out his armor or even his mantle," attended only by three soldiers.
His courtesy was as flattering as that of his countess and her
friend. But his men-at-arms suddenly mastered the unprepared
guards, and the gates were thrown open to Earl William and
his numerous followers. The earls, after this stratagem, held
the castle against the King, who speedily marched to Lincoln.
But the Earl of Chester contrived to leave the castle, and soon
raised a powerful army of his own vassals. The Earl of Glouces-
ter joined him with a considerable force, and they together
advanced to the relief of the besieged city. The battle of Lin-
coln was preceded by a trifling incident to which the chroniclers
have attached importance. It was the Feast of the Purification;
and at the mass which was celebrated at the dawn of day, when
the King was holding a lighted taper in his hand it was suddenly
extinguished. "This was an omen of sorrow to the King,"
says Hoveden. But another chronicler, the author of the Gesta
Stephani, tells us, in addition, that the wax candle was suddenly
relighted; and he accordingly argues that this incident was
"a token that for his sins he should be deprived of his crown,
but on his repentance, through God's mercy, he should won-
derfully and gloriously recover it." The King had been more
than a month laying siege to the castle, and his army was en-
camped around the city of Lincoln. When it was ascertained
that his enemies were at hand he was advised to raise the siege
and march out to strengthen his power by a general levy. He
decided upon instant battle. He was then exhorted not to fight
on the solemn festival of the Purification. But his courage was
greater than his prudence or his piety. He set forth to meet the
insurgent earls. The best knights were in his army; but the
infantry of his rivals was far more numerous. Stephen de-
tached a strong body of horse and foot to dispute the passage
of a ford of the Trent. But Gloucester by an impetuous charge
obtained possession of the ford, and the battle became general.
The King's horsemen fled. The desperate bravery of Stephen,
and the issue of the battle, have been described by Henry of

332 USURPATION OF STEPHEN

Huntingdon with singular animation: "King Stephen, there-
fore, with his infantry, stood alone in the midst of the enemy.
These surrounded the royal troops, attacking the columns on
all sides, as if they were assaulting a castle. Then the battle
raged terribly round this circle; helmets and swords gleamed
as they clashed, and the fearful cries and shouts reechoed from
the neighboring hills and city walls. The cavalry, furiously
charging the royal column, slew some and trampled down
others; some were made prisoners. No respite, no breathing
time, was allowed; except in the quarter in which the King
himself had taken his stand, where the assailants recoiled from
the unmatched force of his terrible arm. The Earl of Chester
seeing this, and envious of the glory the King was gaining, threw
himself upon him with the whole weight of his men-at-arms.
Even then the King's courage did not fail, but his heavy battle-axe
gleamed like lightning, striking down some, bearing back others.
At length it was shattered by repeated blows. Then he drew
his well-tried sword, with which he wrought wonders, until that
too was broken. Perceiving which, William de Kaims, a brave
soldier, rushed on him, and seizing him by his helmet, shouted,
'Here, here, I have taken the King!' Others came to his aid,
and the King was made prisoner."

After the capture of King Stephen, at this brief but decisive
battle, he was kept a close prisoner at Bristol Castle. Then com-
menced what might be called the reign of Queen Matilda, which
lasted about eight months. The defeat of Stephen was the tri-
umph of the greater ecclesiastics. On the third Sunday in
Lent, 1141, there was a conference on the plain in the neigh-
borhood of Winchester — a day dark and rainy, which por-
tended disasters. The Bishop of Winchester came forth from
his city with all the pomp of the pope's legate; and there Ma-
tilda swore that in all matters of importance, and especially in
the bestowal of bishoprics and abbeys, she would submit to
the Church; and the Bishop and his supporters pledged their
faith to the Empress on these conditions. After Easter, a great
council was held at Winchester, which the Bishop called as the
Pope's vicegerent. The unscrupulous churchman boldly came
forward, and denounced his brother, inviting the assembly to
elect a sovereign; and, with an amount of arrogance totally

USURPATION OF STEPHEN 333

unprecedented, thus asserted the notorious untruth that the
right of electing a king of England principally belonged to the
clergy: "The case was yesterday agitated before a part of the
higher clergy of England, to whose right it principally pertains
to elect the sovereign, and also to crown him. First, then, as is
fitting, invoking God's assistance, we elect the daughter of that
peaceful, that glorious, that rich, that good, and hi our times
incomparable king, as sovereign of England and Normandy,
and promise her fidelity and support." The Bishop then said
to the applauding assembly: "We have despatched messengers
for the Londoners, who, from the importance of their city in
England, are almost nobles, as it were, to meet us on this busi-
ness." The next day the Londoners came. They were sent,
they said, by their fraternity to entreat that their lord, the King,
might be liberated from captivity. The legate refused them,
and repeated his oration against his brother. It was a work of
great difficulty to soothe the minds of the Londoners; and
St. John's Day had arrived before they would consent to ac-
knowledge Matilda. Many parts of the kingdom had then sub-
mitted to her government, and she entered London with great
state. Her nature seems to have been rash and imperious. Her
first act was to demand subsidies of the citizens; and when
they said that their wealth was greatly diminished by the troub-
led state of the kingdom, she broke forth into insufferable rage.
The vigilant queen of Stephen, who kept possession of Kent,
now approached the city with a numerous force, and by her
envoys demanded her husband's freedom. Of course her
demand was made in vain. She then put forth a front of battle.
Instead of being crowned at Westminster, the daughter of
Henry I fled hi terror; for "the whole city flew to arms at the
ringing of the bells, which was the signal for war, and all with
one accord rose upon the Countess [of Anjou] and her adher-
ents, as swarms of wasps issue from their hives."

William Fitzstephen, the biographer of Thomas a Becket,
in his Description of London, supposed to be written about the
middle of the reign of Henry II, says of this city, "ennobled by
her men, graced by her arms, and peopled by a multitude of
inhabitants," that "in the wars under King Stephen there went
out to a muster of armed horsemen, esteemed fit for war, twenty

334 USURPATION OF STEPHEN

thousand, and of infantry, sixty thousand." In general, the
Description of London appears trustworthy, and in some in-
stances is supported by other authorities. But this vast num-
ber of fighting men must, unquestionably, be exaggerated:
unless, as Lyttelton conjectures, such a muster included the
militia of Middlesex, Kent, and other counties adjacent to
London. Peter of Blois, in the reign of Henry II, reckons the
inhabitants of the city at forty thousand. That the citizens
were trained to warlike exercises, and that their manly sports
nurtured them in the hardihood of military habits, we may well
conclude from Fitzstephen's account of this community at a
little later period than that of which we are writing. To the
north of the city were pasture lands, with streams on whose
banks the clack of many mills was pleasing to the ear; and
beyond was an immense forest, with densely wooded thickets,
where stags, fallow-deer, boars, and wild bulls had their coverts.
We have seen that in the charter of Henry I the citizens had
liberty to hunt through a very extensive district, and hawking
was also among their free recreations. Football was the fa-
vorite game; and the boys of the schools, and the various guilds
of craftsmen, had each their ball. The elder citizens came on
horseback to see these contests of the young men. Every Sun-
day in Lent a company with lances and shields went out to
joust. In the Easter holidays they had river tournaments.
During the summer the youths exercised themselves in leaping,
archery, wrestling, stone-throwing, slinging javelins, and fight-
ing with bucklers. When the great marsh which washed the
walls of the city on the north was frozen over, sliding, sledging,
and skating were the sports of crowds. They had sham fights
on the ice, and legs and arms were sometimes broken. "But,"
says Fitzstephen, "youth is an age eager for 'glory and desirous
of victory, and so young men engage in counterfeit battles, that
they may conduct themselves more valiantly in real ones."
That universal love of hardy sports, which is one of the greatest
characteristics of England, and from which we derive no little of
that spirit which keeps our island safe, is not of modern growth.
It was one of the most important portions of the education of the
people seven centuries ago.

It was this community, then, so brave, so energetic, so en-

USURPATION OF STEPHEN 335

riched by commerce above all the other cities of England, that
resolutely abided by the fortunes of King Stephen. They had
little to dread from any hostile assaults of the rival faction; for
the city was strongly fortified on all sides except to the river;
but on that side it was secure, after the Tower was built. The
palace of Westminster had also a breastwork and bastions.
After Matilda had taken her hasty departure, the indignant
Londoners marched out, and they sustained a principal part in
what has been called "the rout of Winchester," in which Robert,
Earl of Gloucester, was taken prisoner. The ex-Empress
escaped to Devizes. The capture of the Earl of Gloucester led
to important results. A convention was agreed to between the
adherents of each party that the King should be exchanged for
the Earl. Stephen was once more "every inch a king." But
still there was no peace in the land.

The Bishop of Winchester had again changed his side. In
the hour of success the empress Matilda had refused the rea-
sonable request that Prince Eustace, the son of Stephen, should
be put in possession of his father's earldom of Boulogne.
Malmesbury says, "A misunderstanding arose between the
legate and the Empress which may be justly considered as the
melancholy cause of every subsequent evil in England." The
chief actors in this extraordinary drama present a curious study
of human character. Matilda, resting her claim to the throne
upon her legitimate descent from Henry I, who had himself
usurped the throne — possessing her father's courage and
daring, with some of his cruelty — haughty, vindictive —
furnishes one of the most striking portraits of the proud lady
of the feudal period, who shrank from no danger by reason of
her sex, but made the homage of chivalry to woman a powerful
instrument for enforcing her absolute will. The Earl of Glouces-
ter, the illegitimate brother of Matilda, brave, steadfast, of a
free and generous nature, a sagacious counsellor, a lover of lit-
erature, appears to have had few of the vices of that age, and
most of its elevating qualities. Of Stephen it has been said,
"He deserves no other reproach than that of having embraced
the occupation of a captain of banditti." This appears rather
a harsh judgment from a philosophical writer. Bearing in
mind that the principle of election prevailed in the choice of a

336 USURPATION OF STEPHEN

king, whatever was the hereditary claim, and seeing how wel-
come was the advent of Stephen when he came, in 1135, to
avert the dangers of the kingdom, he merits the title of "a
captain of banditti" no more than Harold or William the Con-
queror. After the contests of six years — the victories, the
defeats, the hostility of the Church, his capture and imprison-
ment — the attachment of the people of the great towns to his
person and government appears to have been unshaken. When
he was defeated at Lincoln, and led captive through the city,
"the surrounding multitude were moved with pity, shedding
tears and uttering cries of grief." Ordericus says : " The King's
disaster filled with grief the clergy and monks and the common
people; because he was condescending and courteous to those
who were good and quiet, and if his treacherous nobles had
allowed it, he would have put an end to their rapacious enter-
prises, and been a generous protector and benevolent friend of
the country." The fourth and not least remarkable personage
of this history is Henry, the Bishop of Winchester, and the
Pope's legate. At that period, when the functions of church-
man and statesman were united, we find this man the chief
instrument for securing the crown for his brother. He subse-
quently becomes the vicegerent of the papal see. Stephen,
with more justice than discretion, is of opinion that bishops are
not doing their duty when they build castles, ride about in
armor, with crowds of retainers, and are not at all scrupulous
in appropriating some of the booty of a lawless time. From
the day when he exhibited his hostility to fighting bishops, the
Pope's legate was his brother's deadly enemy. But he found
that the rival whom he had set up was by no means a pliant
lool in his hands, and he then turned against Matilda. When
Stephen had shaken of! the chains with which he was loaded in
Bristol Castle, the Bishop summoned a council at Westminster,
on his legatine authority; and there "by great powers of elo-
quence, endeavored to extenuate the odium of his own conduct" ;
affirming that he had supported the Empress, " not from inclina-
tion, but necessity." He then " commanded on the part of God
and of the Pope, that they should strenuously assist the King,
appointed by the will of the people, and by the approbation of
the Holy See." Malmesbury, who records these doings, adds

USURPATION OF STEPHEN 337

that a layman sent from the Empress affirmed that "her coming
to England had been effected by the legate's frequent letters";
and that "her taking the King, and holding him in captivity,
had been done principally by his connivance." The reign of
Stephen is not only "the most perfect condensation of all the
ills of feudality," but affords a striking picture of the ills which
befall a people when an ambitious hierarchy, swayed to and
fro at the will of a foreign power, regards the supremacy of the
Church as the one great object to be attained, at whatever
expense of treachery and falsehood, of national degradation
and general suffering.

In 1142 the civil war is raging more fiercely than ever.
Matilda is at Oxford, a fortified city, protected by the Thames,
by a wall, and by an impregnable castle. Stephen, with a body
of veterans, wades across the river and enters the city. Ma-
tilda and her followers take refuge in the keep. For three
months the King presses the siege, surrounding the fortress on
all sides. Famine is approaching to the helpless garrison. It
is the Christmas season. The country is covered with a deep
snow. The Thames and the tributary rivers are frozen over.
With a small escort Matilda contrives to escape, and passes
undiscovered through the royal posts, on a dark and silent
night, when no sound is heard but the clang of a trumpet or the
challenge of a sentinel. In the course of the night she went to
Abingdon on foot, and afterwards reached Wallingford on
horseback. The author of the Gesta Stephani expresses his
wonder at the marvellous escapes of this courageous woman.
The changes of her fortune are equally remarkable. After the
flight from Oxford the arms of the Earl of Gloucester are again
successful. Stephen is beaten at Wilton, and retreats precipi-
tately with his military brother, the Bishop of Winchester.
There are now in the autumn of 1142 universal turmoil and
desolation. Many people emigrate. Others crowd round the
sanctuary of the churches, and dwell there in mean hovels.
Famine is general. Fields are white with ripened corn, but the
cultivators have fled, and there is none to gather the harvest.
Cities are deserted and depopulated. Fierce foreign mercenaries,
for whom the barons have no pay, pillage the farms and the
monasteries. The bishops, for the most part, rest supine amid

E., VOL. V.— 22.

338 USURPATION OF STEPHEN

all this storm of tyranny. When they rouse themselves they
increase rather than mitigate the miseries of the people. Milo,
Earl of Hereford, has demanded money of the Bishop of Here-
ford to pay his troops. The Bishop refuses, and Milo seizes
his lands and goods. The Bishop then pronounces sentence of
excommunication against Milo and his adherents, and lays an
interdict upon the country subject to the Earl's authority. We
might hastily think that the solemn curse pronounced against
a nation, or a district, was an unmeaning ceremony, with its
"bell, book, and candle," to terrify only the weakminded. It
was one of the most outrageous of the numerous ecclesiastical
tyrannies. The consolations of religion were eagerly sought
for and justly prized by the great body of the people, who
earnestly believed that a happy future would be a reward for
the patient endurance of a miserable present. As they were
admitted to the holy communion, they recognized an ac-
knowledgment of the equality of men before the great Father of
all. Their marriages were blessed and their funerals were hal-
lowed. Under an interdict all the churches were shut. No
knell was tolled for the dead, for the dead remained unburied.
No merry peals welcomed the bridal procession, for no couple
could be joined in wedlock. The awe-stricken mother might
have her infant baptized, and the dying might receive extreme
unction. But all public offices of the Church were suspended.
If we imagine such a condition of society in a village devastated
by fire and sword, we may wonder how a free government and
a Christian church have ever grown up among us.

If Stephen had quietly possessed the throne, and his heir had
succeeded him, the crowns of England and Normandy would
have been disconnected before the thirteenth century. Geoffrey
of Anjou, while his duchess was in England, had become mas-
ter of Normandy, and its nobles had acknowledged his son
Henry as their rightful duke. The boy was in England, under
the protection of the Earl of Gloucester, who attended to his
education. The great Earl died in 1147. For a few years
there had been no decided contest between the forces of the
King and the Empress. After eight years of terrible hostility,
and of desperate adventure, Matilda left the country. Stephen
made many efforts to control the license of the barons, but with

. USURPATION OF STEPHEN 339

little effect. He was now engaged in another quarrel with the
Church. His brother had been superseded as legate by Theo-
bald, Archbishop of Canterbury, in consequence of the death
of the Pope who had supported the Bishop of Winchester. The-
obald was Stephen's enemy, and his hostility was rendered
formidable by his alliance with Bigod, the Earl of Norfolk.
The Archbishop excommunicated Stephen and his adherents,
and the King was enforced to submission. In 1150 Stephen,
having been again reconciled to the Church, sought the recog-
nition of his son Eustace as the heir to the kingdom. This
recognition was absolutely refused by the Archbishop, who said
that Stephen was regarded by the papal see as an usurper.
But time was preparing a solution of the difficulties of the king-
dom. Henry of Anjou was grown into manhood. Born in 1 133,
he had been knighted by his uncle, David of Scotland, in 1149.
His father died in 1151, and he became not only Duke of Nor-
mandy, but Earl of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine. In 1152 he
contracted a marriage of ambition with Eleanor, the divorced
wife of Louis of France, and thus became Lord of Aquitaine
and Poitou, which Eleanor possessed in her own right. Master
of all the western coast of France, from the Sonune to the
Pyrenees, with the exception of Brittany, his ambition, thus
strengthened by his power, prepared to dispute the sovereignty
of England with better hopes than ever waited on his mother's
career. He landed with a well-appointed band of followers in
1153, and besieged various castles. But no general encounter
took place. The King and the Duke had a conference, without
witnesses, across a rivulet, and this meeting prepared the way
for a final pacification. The negotiators were Henry, the Bishop,
on the one part, and Theobald, the Archbishop, on the other.
Finally Stephen led the Prince in solemn procession through
the streets of Winchester, "and all the great men of the realm,
by the King's command, did homage, and pronounced the
fealty due to their liege lord, to the Duke of Normandy, saving
only their allegiance to King Stephen during his life." Stephen's
son Eustace had died during the negotiations. The trouble-
some reign of Stephen was soon after brought to a close. He
died on the 25th of October, 1154. His constant and heroic
queen had died three years before him.

ANTIPAPAL DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT:
ARNOLD OF BRESCIA

ST. BERNARD AND THE SECOND CRUSADE
A.D. 1145-1155

JOHANN A. W. NEANDER

During the first half of the twelfth century — a period marked by con-
flicting spiritual tendencies — in Italy began a work of political and relig-
ious reform, which has ever since been associated with the name of its
chief originator and apostle, Arnold of Brescia, so called from his na-
tive city in Lombardy. He was born about the year noo, became a dis-
ciple of Abelard — whose teachings fired him with enthusiasm — and en-
tered the priesthood.

Although quite orthodox in doctrine, he rebelled against the seculari-
zation of the Church — which had given to the pope almost supreme
power in temporal affairs — and against the worldly disposition and life
then prevalent among ecclesiastics and monks. His own life was sternly
simple and ascetic, and this habit had been strongly confirmed by the
ethical passion which burned in the religious and philosophical instruc-
tions of Abelard. With the popular religion Arnold had earnest sympa-
thy, but he would reduce the clergy to their primitive and apostolic pov-
erty, depriving them of individual wealth and of all temporal power.

The inspiring idea of Arnold's movement was that of a holy and pure
church, a renovation of the spiritual order after the pattern of the apos-
tolic church. He conformed in dress as well as in his mode of life to
the principles he taught. The worldly and often corrupt clergy, he
maintained, were unfit to discharge the priestly functions — they were no
longer priests, and the secularized Church was no longer the house of
God.

Arnold dreamed of a great Christian republic and labored to establish
it, insomuch that his ideal, never realized in concrete form, either hi
church or state, took, and in history has kept, the name of republic.
His eloquence and sincerity brought him powerful popular support, and
even a large part of the nobility were won to his side. But of course,
among those whom his aims condemned or antagonized, there were many
who spared no pains to place him in an unfavorable light and to bring
his labors to naught. In the simple story of his career, as here told by
the great church historian, his figure appears in an attitude of heroism,
which the pathos of his end can only make the reader more deeply ap-

34°

DEMOCRATIC PAPAL MOVEMENT 341

preciate. Through all this agitation is heard the voice of St. Bernard
urging the religious conscience and better aspiration of the time, preach-
ing the Second Crusade, and speeding its eastward march with earnest
expectation — his high hope doomed to perish with its inglorious result.

A RNOLD'S discourses were directly calculated by their
tendency to find ready entrance into the minds of the
laity, before whose eyes the worldly lives of the ecclesiastics
and monks were constantly present, and to create a faction in
deadly hostility to the clergy. Superadded to this was the in-
flammable matter already prepared by the collision of the spirit
of political freedom with the power of the higher clergy. Thus
Arnold's addresses produced in the minds of the Italian people,
quite susceptible to such excitements, a prodigious effect, which
threatened to spread more widely, and Pope Innocent felt him-
self called upon to take preventive measures against it. At the
Lateran Council, in the year 1139, he declared against Arnold's
proceedings, and commanded him to quit Italy — the scene of
the disturbances thus far — and not to return again without ex-
press permission from the Pope. Arnold, moreover, is said to
have bound himself by an oath to obey this injunction, which
probably was expressed in such terms as to leave him free to
interpret it as referring exclusively to the person of Pope In-
nocent. If the oath was not so expressed, he might afterward
have been accused of violating that oath. It is to be regretted
that the form in which the sentence was pronounced against
Arnold has not come down to us; but from its very character
it is evident that he could not have been convicted of any false
doctrine, since otherwise the Pope would certainly not have
treated him so mildly — would not have been contented with
merely banishing him from Italy, since teachers of false doctrine
would be dangerous to the Church everywhere.

Bernard, moreover, in his letter directed against Arnold,
states that he was accused before the Pope of being the author
of a very bad schism. Arnold now betook himself to France, and
here he became entangled in the quarrels with his old teacher
Abelard, to whom he was indebted for the first impulse of his
mind toward this more serious and free bent of the religious
spirit. Expelled from France, he directed his steps to Switzer-
land, and sojourned in Zurich. The abbot Bernard thought

342 DEMOCRATIC PAPAL MOVEMENT

it necessary to caution the Bishop of Constance against him;
but the man who had been condemned by the Pope found pro-
tection there from the papal legate, Cardinal Guido, who,
indeed, made him a member of his household and companion
of his table. The abbot Bernard severely censured the prelate,
on the ground that Arnold's connection with him would con-
tribute, without fail, to give importance and influence to that
dangerous man. This deserves to be noticed on two accounts,
for it makes it evident what power he could exercise over men's
minds, and that no false doctrines could be charged to his
account.

But independent of Arnold's personal presence, the im-
pulse which he had given continued to operate in Italy, and
the effects of it extended even to Rome. By the papal con-
demnation, public attention was only more strongly drawn to
the subject.

The Romans certainly felt no great sympathy for the relig-
ious element in that serious spirit of reform which animated
Arnold; but the political movements, which had sprung out
of his reforming tendency, found a point of attachment in their
love of liberty, and their dreams of the ancient dominion of
Rome over the world. The idea of emancipating themselves
from the yoke of the Pope, and of reestablishing the old Repub-
lic, flattered their Roman pride. Espousing the principles of
Arnold, they required that the Pope, as spiritual head of the
Church, should confine himself to the administration of spiritual
affairs; and they committed to a senate the supreme direction
of civil affairs.

Innocent could do nothing to stem such a violent current ; and
he died in the midst of these disturbances, in the year 1143.
The mild Cardinal Guido, the friend of Abelard and Arnold,
became his successor, and called himself, when pope, Celestine
II. By his gentleness, quiet was restored for a short time.
Perhaps it was the news of the elevation of this friendly man
to the papal throne that encouraged Arnold himself to come to
Rome. But Celestine died after six months, and Lucius II
was his successor. Under his reign the Romans renewed the
former agitations with more violence; they utterly renounced
obedience to the Pope, whom they recognized only in his priestly

DEMOCRATIC PAPAL MOVEMENT 343

character, and the restored Roman Republic sought to strike a
league in opposition to the Pope and to papacy with the new
Emperor, Conrad III.

In the name of the "senate and Roman people," a pompous
letter was addressed to Conrad. The Emperor was invited
to come to Rome, that from thence, like Justinian and Con-
stantine, in former days, he might give laws to the world.

Caesar should have the things that are Caesar's; the priest
the things that are the priest's, as Christ ordained when Peter
paid the tribute money. Long did the tendency awakened by
Arnold's principles continue to agitate Rome. In the letters
written amidst these commotions, by individual noblemen of
Rome to the Emperor, we perceive a singular mixing together
of the Arnoldian spirit with the dreams of Roman vanity; a
radical tendency to the separation of secular from spiritual
things which if it had been capable enough in itself, and if it
could have found more points of attachment in the age, would
have brought destruction on the old theocratical system of the
Church. They said that the Pope could claim no political
sovereignty in Rome; he could not even be consecrated without
the consent of the Emperor — a rule which had in fact been
observed till the time of Gregory VII. Men complained of the
worldliness of the clergy, of their bad lives, of the contradiction
between their conduct and the teachings of Scripture.

The popes were accused as the instigators of the wars.
"The popes," it was said, "should no longer unite the cup of the
eucharist with the sword; it was their vocation to preach, and
to confirm what they preached by good works. How could
those who eagerly grasped at all the wealth of this world, and
corrupted the true riches of the Church, the doctrine of salvation
obtained by Christ, by their false doctrines and their luxurious
living, receive that word of our Lord, { Blessed are the poor in
spirit,' when they were poor themselves neither in fact nor in
disposition ? " Even the donative of Constantine to the Roman
bishop Silvester was declared to be a pitiable fiction. This
lie had been so clearly exposed that it was obvious to the very
day-laborers and to women, and that these could put to silence
the most learned men if they ventured to defend the genuineness
of this donative; so that the Pope, with his cardinals, no longer

344 DEMOCRATIC PAPAL MOVEMENT

dared to appear in public. But Arnold was perhaps the only
individual in whose case such a tendency was deeply rooted in
religious conviction; with many it was but a transitory intoxi-
cation, in which their political interests had become merged
for the moment.

The pope Lucius II was killed as early as 1145, in the
attack on the Capitol. A scholar of the great abbot Bernard,
the abbot Peter Bernard of Pisa, now mounted the papal chair
under the name of Eugene III. As Eugene honored and loved
the abbot Bernard as his spiritual father and old preceptor,
so the latter took advantage of his relation to the Pope to speak
the truth to him with a plainness which no other man would
easily have ventured to use. In congratulating him upon his
elevation to the papal dignity, he took occasion to exhort him
to do away with the many abuses which had become so widely
spread in the Church by worldly influences. "Who will give
me the satisfaction," said he in his letter, "of beholding the
Church of God, before I die, in a condition like that hi which
it was in ancient days, when the apostles threw out their nets,
not for silver and gold, but for souls ? How fervently I wish
thou mightest inherit the word of that apostle whose episcopal
seat thou hast acquired, of him who said, ' Thy gold perish with
thee.' Oh that all the enemies of Zion might tremble before
this dreadful word, and shrink back abashed! This, thy
mother indeed expects and requires of thee, for this long and
sigh the sons of thy mother, small and great, that every plant
which our Father in heaven has not planted may be rooted up
by thy hands." He then alluded to the sudden deaths of the last
predecessors of the Pope, exhorting him to humility, and remind-
ing him of his responsibility. "In all thy works," he wrote,
"remember that thou art a man; and let the fear of Him who
taketh away the breath of rulers be ever before thine eyes."

Eugene was soon forced to yield, it is true, to the superior
force of the insurrectionary spirit in Rome, and in 1146 to take
refuge in France; but, like Urban and Innocent, he too, from
this country, attained to the highest triumph of the papal power.
Like Innocent, he found there, in the abbot Bernard of Clair-
vaux, a mightier instrument for operating on the minds of the
age than he could have found in any other country; and like

DEMOCRATIC PAPAL MOVEMENT 345

Urban, when banished from the ancient seat of the papacy, he
was enabled to place himself at the head of a crusade pro-
claimed in his name, and undertaken with great enthusiasm;
an enterprise from which a new impression of sacredness would
be reflected back upon his own person.

The news of the success which had attended the arms of the
Saracens in Syria, the defeat of the Christians, the conquest
of the ancient Christian territory of Edessa, the danger which
threatened the new Christian kingdom of Jerusalem and the
Holy City, had spread alarm among the Western nations, and
the Pope considered himself bound to summon the Christians
of the West to the assistance of their hard-pressed brethren in
the faith and to the recovery of the holy places. By a letter
directed to the abbot Bernard he commissioned him to exhort
the Western Christians in his name, that, for penance and
forgiveness of sins, they should march to the East, to deliver
their brethren, or to give up their lives for them. Enthusiastic
for the cause himself s Bernard communicated, through the
power of the living word and by letters, his enthusiasm to the
nations. He represented the new crusade as a means furnished
by God to the multitudes sunk in sin, of calling them to re-
pentance, and of paving the way, by devout participation in a
pious work, for the forgiveness of their sins. Thus, in his
letter to the clergy and people in East Frankland (Germany),
he exhorts them eagerly to lay hold on this opportunity; he
declares that the Almighty condescended to invite murderers,
robbers, adulterers, perjurers, and those sunk in-other crimes,
into his service, as well as the righteous. He calls upon them
to make an end of waging war with one another, and to seek
an object for their warlike prowess in this holy contest. "Here,
brave warrior," he exclaims, "thou hast a field where thou
mayest fight without danger, where victory is glory and death
is gain. Take the sign of the cross, and thou shalt obtain the
forgiveness of all the sins which thou hast never confessed with
a contrite heart." By Bernard's fiery discourses men of all
ranks were carried away. In France and in Germany he
travelled about, conquering by an effort his great bodily in-
firmities, and the living word from his lips produced even
mightier effects than his letters.

346 DEMOCRATIC PAPAL MOVEMENT

A peculiar charm, and a peculiar power of moving men's
minds, must have existed in the tones of his voice; to this must
be added the awe-inspiring effect of his whole appearance, the
way in which his whole being and the motions of his bodily
frame joined in testifying of that which seized and inspired
him. Thus it admits of being explained how, in Germany,
even those who understood but little, or in fact nothing, of
what he said, could be so moved as to shed tears and smite their
breasts; could, by his own speeches hi a foreign language, be
more strongly affected and agitated than by the immediate
interpretation of his words by another. From all quarters
sick persons were conveyed to him by the friends who sought
from him a cure; and the power of his faith, the confidence he
inspired in the minds of men, might sometimes produce re-
markable effects. With this enthusiasm, however, Bernard
united a degree of prudence and a discernment of character
such as few of that age possessed, and such qualities were re-
quired to counteract the multiform excitements of the wild
spirit of fanaticism which mixed in with this great ferment of
minds.

Thus, he warned the Germans not to suffer themselves to
be misled so far as to follow certain independent enthusiasts,
ignorant of war, who were bent on moving forward the bodies
of the crusaders prematurely. He held up as a warning the
example of Peter the Hermit, and declared himself very decid-
edly opposed to the proposition of an abbot who was disposed
to march with a number of monks to Jerusalem; "for," said he,
"fighting warriors are more needed there than singing monks."
At an assembly held at Chartres it was proposed that he him-
self should take the lead of the expedition; but he rejected the
proposition at once, declaring that it was beyond his power
and contrary to his calling. Having, perhaps, reason to fear
that the Pope might be hurried on, by the shouts of the many,
to lay upon him some charge to which he did not feel himself
called, he besought the Pope that he would not make him a
victim to men's arbitrary will, but that he would inquire, as it
was his duty to do, how God had determined to dispose of
him.

With the preaching of this Second Crusade, as with the in-

DEMOCRATIC PAPAL MOVEMENT 347

vitation to the First, was connected an extraordinary awakening.
Many who had hitherto given themselves up to their unre-
strained passions and desires, and become strangers to all
higher feelings, were seized with compunction. Bernard's
call to repentance penetrated many a heart; people who had
lived in all manner of crime were seen following this voice
and flocking together in troops to receive the badge of the cross.
Bishop Otto of Freisingen, the historian, who himself took
the cross at that time, expresses it as his opinion "that every
man of sound understanding would be forced to acknowledge
so sudden and uncommon a change could have been produced
in no other way than by the right hand of the Lord." The
provost Gerhoh of Reichersberg, who wrote in the midst of
these movements, was persuaded that he saw here a work of
the Holy Spirit, designed to counteract the vices and corrup-
tions which had got the upper hand in the Church.

Many who had been awakened to repentance confessed
what they had taken from others by robbery or fraud, and
hastened, before they went to the holy war, to seek reconcilia-
tion with their enemies. The Christian enthusiasm of the Ger-
man people found utterance hi songs in the German tongue;
and even now the peculiar adaptation of this language to sacred
poetry began to be remarked. Indecent songs could no longer
venture to appear abroad.

While some were awakened by Bernard's preaching from
a life of crime to repentance, and by taking part in the holy war
strove to obtain the remission of their sins, others again, who
though hitherto borne along in the current of ordinary worldly
pursuits, yet had not given themselves up to vice, were filled by
Bernard's words with loathing of the worldly life, inflamed
with a vehement longing after a higher stage of Christian per-
fection, after a life of entire consecration to God. They longed
rather to enter upon the pilgrimage to the heavenly than to an
earthly Jerusalem; they resolved t> become monks, and would
fain have the man of God himself, whose words had made so
deep an impression on their hearts, as their guide in the spiritual
life, and commit themselves to his directions, in the monastery
of Clairvaux. But here Bernard showed his prudence and
knowledge of mankind; he did not allow all to become monks

348 DEMOCRATIC PAPAL MOVEMENT

who wished to do so. Many he rejected because he perceived
they were not fitted for the quiet of the contemplative life, but
needed to be disciplined by the conflicts and cares of a life of
action.

As contemporaries themselves acknowledge, these first im-
pressions, in the case of many who went to the crusades, were
of no permanent duration, and their old nature broke forth
again the more strongly under the manifold temptations to
which they were exposed, in proportion to the facility with
which, through the confidence they reposed in a plenary in-
dulgence, without really laying to heart the condition upon
which it was bestowed, they could flatter themselves with se-
curity in their sins.

Gerhoh of Reichersberg, in describing the blessed effects
of that awakening which accompanied the preaching of the
crusader, yet says: "We doubt not that among so vast a
multitude some became in the true sense and in all sincerity
soldiers of Christ. Some, however, were led to embark in the
enterprise by various other occasions, concerning whom it does
not belong to us to judge, but only to Him who alone knows
the hearts of those who marched to the contest either in the
right or not in the right spirit. Yet this we do confidently
affirm, that to this crusade many were called, but few were
chosen." And it was said that many returned from this ex-
pedition, not better, but worse than they went. Therefore the
monk Cesarius of Heisterbach, who states this, adds: "All
depends on bearing the yoke of Christ not one year or two years,
but daily, if a man is really intent on doing it in truth, and in
that sense in which our Lord requires it to be done, in order
to follow him."

When it turned out, however, that the event did not answer
the expectations excited by Bernard's enthusiastic confidence,
but the crusade came to that unfortunate issue which was
brought about especially by the treachery of the princes and
nobles of the Christian kingdom in Syria, this was a source
of great chagrin to Bernard, who had been so active in setting
it in motion, and who had inspired such confident hopes by his
promises. He appeared now in the light of a bad prophet,
and he was reproached by many with having incited men to

DEMOCRATIC PAPAL MOVEMENT 349

engage in an enterprise which had cost so much blood to no
purpose; but Bernard's friends alleged, in his defence, that he
had not excited such a popular movement single-handed,
but as the organ of the Pope, in whose name he acted; and
they appealed to the facts by which his preaching of the cross
was proved to be a work of God — to the wonders which attended
it. Or they ascribed the failure of the undertaking to the bad
conduct of the crusaders themselves, to the unchristian mode
of life which many of them led, as one of these friends main-
tained, in a consoling letter to Bernard himself, adding, " God,
however, has turned it to good. Numbers who, if they had
returned home, would have continued to live a life of crime,
disciplined and purified by many sufferings, have passed into
the life eternal."

But Bernard himself could not be staggered in his faith by
this event. In writing to Pope Eugene on this subject, he
refers to the incomprehensibleness of the divine ways and
judgments; to the example of Moses, who, although his work
carried on its face incontestable evidence of being a work of
God, yet was not permitted himself to conduct the Jews into
the Promised Land. As this was owing to the fault of the Jews
themselves, so too the crusaders had none to blame but them-
selves for the failure of the divine work. "But," says he, "it
will be said, perhaps, how do we know that this work came from
the Lord ? What miracle dost thou work that we should be-
lieve thee? To this question I need not give an answer; it is
a point on which my modesty asks to be excused from speak-
ing. Do you answer," says he to the Pope, "for me and for
yourself, according to that which you have seen and heard."
So firmly was Bernard convinced that God had sustained his
labors by miracles.

Eugene was at length enabled, in the year 1149, after having
for a long time excited against himself the indignation of the
cardinals by his dependence on the French abbot, with the
assistance of Roger, King of the Sicilies, to return to Rome;
where, however, he still had to maintain a struggle with the
party of Arnold.

The provost Gerhoh finds something to complain of in the
fact that the Church of St. Peter wore so warlike an aspect that

350 DEMOCRATIC PAPAL MOVEMENT

men beheld the tomb of the apostle surrounded with bastions
and the implements of war.

As Bernard was no longer sufficiently near the Pope to
exert on him the same immediate personal influence as in
times past, he addressed to him a voice of admonition and
warning, such as the mighty of the earth seldom enjoy the
privilege of hearing. With the frankness of a love which,
as he himself expresses it, knew not the master, but recognized
the son, even under the pontifical robes, he set before him,
in his four books On Meditation, which he sent to him singly
at different times, the duties of his office, and the faults against
which, in order to fulfil these duties, he needed especially to
guard.

Bernard was penetrated with a conviction that to the Pope,
as St. Peter's successor, was committed by God a sovereign
power of church government over all, and responsible to no
other tribunal; that to this church theocracy, guided by the
Pope, the administration even of the secular power, though
independent within its own peculiar sphere, should be subjected,
for the service of the kingdom of God; but he also perceived,
with the deepest pain, how very far the papacy was from cor-
responding to this its idea and destination; what prodigious
corruption had sprung and continued to spring from the abuse
of papal authority; he perceived already, with prophetic eye,
that this very abuse of arbitrary will must eventually bring
about the destruction of this power. He desired that the Pope
should disentangle himself from the secular part of his office,
and reduce that office within the purely spiritual domain; and
that, above all, he should learn to govern and restrict himself.

But to the close of his life, in the year 1153, Pope Eugene
had to contend with the turbulent spirit of the Romans and
the influences of the principles disseminated by Arnold; and
this contest was prolonged into the reign of his second successor,
Adrian IV. Among the people and among the nobles, a con-
siderable party had arisen who would concede to the Pope
no kind of secular dominion. And there seems to have been
a shade of difference among the members of this party. A
mob of the people is said to have gone to such an extreme of
arrogance as to propose the choosing of a new emperor from

DEMOCRATIC PAPAL MOVEMENT 351

among the Romans themselves, the restoration of a Roman
empire independent of the Pope. The other party, to which
belonged the nobles, were for placing the emperor Frederick
I at the head of the Roman Republic, and uniting themselves
with him in a common interest against the Pope. They invited
him to receive the imperial crown, in the ancient manner, from
the " senate and Roman people," and not from the heretical and
recreant clergy and false monks, who acted in contradiction
to their calling, exercising lordship despite of the evangelical
and apostolical doctrine; and in contempt of all laws, divine
and human, brought the Church of God and the kingdom
of the world into confusion. Those who pretend that they are
the representatives of Peter, it was said, in a letter addressed
in the spirit of this party to the emperor Frederick I, "act in
contradiction to the doctrines which that apostle teaches in his
epistles. How can they say with the apostle Peter, 'Lo, we
have left all and followed thee,' and, 'Silver and gold have
I none ' ? How can our Lord say to such, ' Ye are the light of
the world,' 'the salt of the earth'? Much rather is to be ap-
plied to them what our Lord says of the salt that has lost its
savor. 'Eager after earthly riches, they spoil the true riches,
from which the salvation of the world has proceeded.' How
can the saying be applied to them, 'Blessed are the poor in
spirit ' ? for they are neither poor in spirit nor in fact."

Pope Adrian IV was first enabled, under more favorable
circumstances, and assisted by the Emperor Frederick I, to
deprive the Arnold party of its leader, and then to suppress it
entirely. It so happened that, in the first year of Adrian's
reign, 1155, a cardinal, on his way to visit the Pope, was attacked
and wounded by followers of Arnold. This induced the Pope
to put all Rome under the interdict, with a view to force the
expulsion of Arnold and his party. This means did not fail
of its effect. The people who could not bear the suspension
of divine worship, now themselves compelled the nobles to
bring about the ejection of Arnold and his friends. Arnold,
on leaving Rome, found protection from Italian nobles. By
the order, however, of the emperor Frederick, who had come
into Italy, he was torn from his protectors and surrendered
up to the papal authority. The Prefect of Rome then took

352 DEMOCRATIC PAPAL MOVEMENT

possession of his person and caused him to be hanged. His
body was burned, and its ashes thrown into the Tiber, lest
his bones might be preserved as the relics of a martyr by the
Romans, who were enthusiastically devoted to him. Worthy
men, who were in other respects zealous defenders of the church
orthodoxy and of the hierarchy — as, for example, Gerhoh of
Reichersberg — expressed their disapprobation, first, that Arnold
should be punished with death on account of the errors which
he disseminated; secondly, that the sentence of death should
proceed from a spiritual tribunal, or that such a tribunal should
at least have subjected itself to that bad appearance.

But on the part of the Roman court it was alleged, in de-
fence of this proceeding, that "it was done without the knowl-
edge and contrary to the will of the Roman curia." "The
Prefect of Rome had forcibly removed Arnold from the prison
where he was kept, and his servants had put him to death in
revenge for injuries they had suffered from Arnold's party.
Arnold, therefore, was executed, not on account of his doctrines,
but in consequence of tumults excited by himself." It may be
a question whether this was said with sincerity, or whether,
according to the proverb, a confession of guilt is not implied
in the excuse. But Gerhoh was of the opinion that in this
case they should at least have done as David did, in the case of
Abner's death, and, by allowing Arnold to be buried, and his
death to be mourned over, instead of causing his body to be
burned, and the remains thrown into the Tiber, washed their
hands of the whole transaction.

But the idea for which Arnold had contended, and for
which he died, continued to work in various forms, even after
his death — the idea of a purification of the Church from the
foreign worldly elements with which it had become vitiated,
of its restoration to its original spiritual character.

DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE:
RAVAGES OF ROGER OF SICILY

A.D. 1146

GEORGE FINLAY

From the enthronement of the Comnenian dynasty in A.D. 1081,
which was accomplished through a successful rebellion, attended by
shameful treachery and rapine, the Byzantine empire, and especially
Constantinople, its capital, passed through many vicissitudes ; but the
sack of the city by Alexius Comnenus, the founder of the line, was re-
membered by the populace to the disadvantage of all his successors: the
last of whom, Andronicus I, ended his reign in 1185. John, the son of
Alexius (1118-1143), ruled with discretion and ability, and recovered some
territory from the Turks.

Manuel I, the son of John (1143-1181), ruled during a period of almost
constant war, and for a time he held the enemies of the empire in check.
But he appears to have been more endowed with courage and the spirit
of enterprise than with good judgment, and his conduct of the empire
coincided with events that, as seen in history, contributed to its decline,
which after his death followed rapidly. As this decline is to be dated
especially from the passing but not ineffectual invasion of Roger II,
King of Sicily, in 1146, some account of that, together with a view of con-
ditions immediately preceding, becomes important in a work like this.

The century and a half before Roger's invasion had been a period of
tranquillity for the distinctively Greek people of the empire, who had
increased rapidly in numbers and wealth, and were in possession of an
extensive commerce and many manufactures. Therefore they were per-
haps the greatest sufferers from the adverse events which befell the
State.

HpHE emperor Alexius I had concluded a commercial treaty
with Pisa toward the end of his reign. Manuel renewed
this alliance, and he appears to have been the first of the Byzan-
tine emperors who concluded a public treaty with Genoa. The
pride of the emperors of the Romans — as the sovereigns of
Constantinople were styled — induced them to treat the Italian
republics as municipalities still dependent on the Empire of the
Caesars, of which they had once formed a part; and the rulers
both of Pisa and Genoa yielded to this assumption of suprem-
E., VOL. v.— 23. 353

354 DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

acy, and consented to appear as vassals and liegemen of the
Byzantine emperors, in order to participate in the profits which
they saw the Venetians gained by trading in their dominions.

Several commercial treaties with Pisa and Genoa, as well
as with Venice, have been preserved. The obligations of the
republics are embodied in the charter enumerating the con-
cessions granted by the Emperor, and the document is called a
chrysobulum, or golden bull, from the golden seal of the Em-
peror attached to it as the certificate of its authenticity.

In Manuel's treaties with the Genoese and Pisans, the
republics bind themselves never to engage in hostilities against
the empire; but, on the contrary, all the subjects of the repub-
lics residing in the Emperor's dominions become bound to
assist him against all assailants; they engage to act with their
own ships, or to serve on board the imperial fleet, for the usual
pay granted to Latin mercenaries. They promise to offer no
impediment to the extension of the empire hi Syria, reserving
to themselves the factories and privileges they already possess
in any place that may be conquered. They submit their civil
and criminal affairs to the jurisdiction of the Byzantine courts
of justice, as was then the case with the Venetians and other
foreigners in the empire. Acts of piracy and armed violence,
unless the criminals were taken in the act, were to be reported
to the rulers of the republic whose subjects had committed the
crime, and the Byzantine authorities were not to render the
innocent traders in the empire responsible for the injuries in-
flicted by these brigands. The republicans engaged to observe
all the stipulations in their treaties, in defiance of ecclesiastical
excommunication or the prohibition of any individual, crowned
or not crowned.

Manuel, hi return, granted to the republicans the right of
forming a factory, erecting a quay for landing their goods, and
building a church; and the Genoese received their grant in an
agreeable position on the side of the port opposite Constanti-
nople, where in after-times their great colony of Galata was
formed. The Emperor promised to send an annual of from
four hundred to five hundred gold bezants, with two pieces of
a rich brocade then manufactured only in the Byzantine em-
pire, to the republican governments, and sixty bezants, with

DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE 355

one piece of brocade, to their archbishops. These treaties fixed
the duty levied on the goods imported or exported from Con-
stantinople by the Italians at 4 per cent.; but in the other
cities of the empire, the Pisans and Genoese were to pay the
same duties as other Latin traders, excepting, of course, the
privileged Venetians. These duties generally amounted to
10 per cent. The republics were expressly excluded, by the
Genoese treaty, from the Black Sea trade, except when they
received a special license from the Emperor. In case of ship-
wreck, the property of the foreigners was to be protected by
the imperial authorities and respected by the people, and every
assistance was to be granted to the unfortunate sufferers. This
humane clause was not new in Byzantine commercial treaties,
for it is contained in the earliest treaty concluded by Alexius I
with the Pisans. On the whole, the arrangements for the ad-
ministration of justice in these treaties prove that the Byzan-
tine empire still enjoyed a greater degree of order than the rest
of Europe.

The state of civilization in the Eastern Empire rendered the
public finances the moving power of the government, as in the
nations of modern Europe. This must always tend to the
centralization of political authority, for the highest branch of
the executive will always endeavor to dispose of the revenues
of the State according to its views of necessity. This centraliz-
ing policy led Manuel to order all the money which the Greek
commercial communities had hitherto devoted to maintaining
local squadrons of galleys for the defence of the islands and
coasts of the ^Egean to be remitted to the treasury at Constan-
tinople. The ships were compelled to visit the imperial dock-
yard in the capital to undergo repairs and to receive provisions
and pay.

A navy is a most expensive establishment; kings, minis-
ters, and people are all very apt to think that when it is not
wanted at any particular time, the cost of its maintenance may
be more profitably applied to other objects. Manuel, after he
had secured the funds of the Greeks for his own treasury, soon
left their ships to rot, and the commerce of Greece became
exposed to the attacks of small squadrons of Italian pirates
who previously would not have dared to plunder in the Archi-

3$6 DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

pelago. It may be thought by some that Manuel acted wisely
in centralizing the naval administration of his empire; but the
great number, the small size, and the relative position of many
of the Greek islands with regard to the prevailing winds render
the permanent establishment of naval stations at several points
necessary to prevent piracy.

Manuel and Otho ruined the navy of Greece by their un-
wise measures of centralization; Pericles, by prudently cen-
tralizing the maritime forces of the various states, increased the
naval power of Athens, and gave additional security to every
Greek ship that navigated the sea.

The same fiscal views which induced Manuel to centralize
the naval administration when it was injurious to the interests
of the empire, prompted him to act diametrically opposite with
regard to the army. The emperor John had added greatly to
the efficiency of the Byzantine military force by improving and
centralizing its administration, and he left Manuel an excel-
lent army, which rendered the Eastern Empire the most power-
ful state in Europe. But Manuel, from motives of economy,
abandoned his father's system. Instead of assembling all the
military forces of the empire annually in camps, where they
received pay and were subjected to strict discipline, toward
the end of his reign he distributed even the regular army in
cities and provinces, where they were quartered far apart, in
order that each district, by maintaining a certain number of
men, might relieve the treasury from the burden of their pay
and subsistence while they were not on actual service. The
money thus retained in the central treasury was spent in idle
festivals at Constantinople, and the troops, dispersed and neg-
lected, became careless of their military exercises, and lived in
a state of relaxed discipline. Other abuses were quickly intro-
duced; resident yeomen, shopkeepers, and artisans were en-
rolled in the legions, with the connivance of the officers. The
burden of maintaining the troops was in this way diminished,
but the army was deteriorated.

In other districts, where the divisions were exposed to be
called into action, or were more directly under central inspec-
tion, the effective force was kept up at its full complement, but
the people were compelled to submit to every kind of extortion

DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE 357

and tyranny. The tendency of absolute power being always
to weaken the power of the law, and to increase the authority
of the executive agents of the sovereign, soon manifested its
effects in the rapid progress of administrative corruption.
The Byzantine garrisons in a few years became prototypes of
the shopkeeping janizaries of the Ottoman empire, and bore
no resemblance to the feudal militia of Western Europe, which
Manuel had proposed as the model of his reform. This change
produced a rapid decline in the military strength of the Byzan-
tine army and accelerated the fall of the empire.

For a considerable period the Byzantine emperors had been
gradually increasing the proportion of foreign mercenaries in
their service; this practice Manuel carried further than any of
his predecessors. Besides the usual Varangian, Italian, and
German guards, we find large corps of Patzinaks, Franks, and
Turks enrolled in his armies, and officers of these nations
occupying situations of the highest rank. A change had taken
place in the military tactics, caused by the heavy armor and
powerful horses which the crusaders brought into the field, and
by the greater personal strength and skill in warlike exercises
of the Western troops, who had no occupation from infancy
but gymnastic exercises and athletic amusements. The no-
bility of the feudal nations expended more money on arms and
armor than on other luxuries; and this becoming the general
fashion, the Western troops were much better armed than the
Byzantine soldiers. War became the profession of the higher
ranks, and the expense of military undertakings was greatly
increased by the military classes being completely separated
from the rest of society. The warlike disposition of Manuel
led him to favor the military nobles of the West who took ser-
vice at his court; while his confidence in his own power, and
in the political superiority of his empire, deluded him with the
hope of being able to quell the turbulence of the Franks, and set
bounds to the ambition and power of the popes.

The wars of Manuel were sometimes forced on him by
foreign powers, and sometimes commenced for temporary ob-
jects; but he appears never to have formed any fixed idea of
the permanent policy which ought to have determined the
constant employment of all the military resources at his com-

358 DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

mand, for the purpose of advancing the interest of his empire
and giving security to his subjects. His military exploits may
be considered under three heads: His wars with the Franks,
whether in Asia or Europe; his wars with the Hungarians and
Servians; and his wars with the Turks.

His first operations were against the principality of Antioch.
The death of John II caused the dispersion of the fine army he
had assembled for the conquest of Syria; but Manuel sent a por-
tion of that army, and a strong fleet, to attack the principality.
One of the generals of the land forces was Prosuch, a Turkish
officer in high favor with his father. Raymond of Antioch was
no longer the idle gambler he had shown himself in the camp
of the emperor John; but though he was now distinguished
by his courage and skill in arms, he was completely defeated,
and the imperial army carried its ravages up to the very walls
of Antioch, while the fleet laid waste the coast. Though the
Byzantine troops retired, the losses of the campaign convinced
Raymond that it would be impossible to defend Antioch should
Manuel take the field in person. He therefore hastened to Con-
stantinople, as a suppliant, to sue for peace; but Manuel, before
admitting him to an audience, required that he should repair
to the tomb of the emperor John and ask pardon for hav-
ing violated his former promises. When the Hercules of the
Franks, as Raymond was called, had submitted to this humilia-
tion, he was admitted to the imperial presence, swore fealty to
the Byzantine empire as Prince of Antioch, and became the
vassal of the emperor Manuel. The conquest of Edessa by
the Mahometans, which took place in the month of December,
1144, rendered the defence of Antioch by the Latins a doubtful
enterprise, unless they could secure the assistance of the Greeks.

Manuel involved himself in a war with Roger, King of
Sicily, which perhaps he might have avoided by more prudent
conduct. An envoy he had sent to the Sicilian court concluded
a treaty, which Manuel thought fit to disavow with unsuitable
violence. This gave the Sicilian King a pretext for commenc-
ing war, but the real cause of hostilities must be sought hi the
ambition of Roger and the hostile feelings of Manuel. Roger
was one of the wealthiest princes of his time; he had united
under his sceptre both Sicily and all the Norman possessions in

DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE 359

Southern Italy; his ambition was equal to his wealth and power,
and he aspired at eclipsing the glory of Robert Guiscard and
Bohemund by some permanent conquests in the Byzantine
empire. On the other hand, the renown of Roger excited the
envy of Manuel, who, proud of his army and confident of his
own valor and military skill, hoped to reconquer Sicily. His
passion made him forget that he was surrounded by numerous
enemies, who would combine to prevent his employing all his
forces against one adversary. Manuel consequently acted im-
prudently in revealing his hostile intentions; while Roger could
direct all his forces against one point, and avail himself of
Manuel's embarrassments. He commenced hostilities by in-
flicting a blow on the wealth and prosperity of Greece, from
which it never recovered.

At the commencement of the Second Crusade, when the
attention of Manuel was anxiously directed to the movements
of Louis VII of France, and Conrad, Emperor of Germany,
Roger, who had collected a powerful fleet at Brindisi, for the
purpose either of attacking the Byzantine empire or transport-
ing the crusaders to Palestine, availed himself of an insurrection
in Corfu to conclude a convention with the inhabitants, who
admitted a garrison of one thousand Norman troops into their
citadel. The Corfutes complained with great reason of the
intolerable weight of taxation to which they were subjected;
of the utter neglect of their interests by the central government,
which consumed their wealth, and of the great abuses which
prevailed in the administration of justice ; but the remedy they
adopted, by placing themselves under the rule of foreign mas-
ters, was not likely to alleviate these evils.

The Sicilian admiral, after landing the Norman garrison
at Corfu, sailed to Monembasia, then one of the principal
commercial cities in the East, hoping to gain possession of it
without difficulty; but the maritime population of this impreg-
nable fortress gave him a warm reception and easily repulsed
his attack. After plundering the coasts of Eubcea and Attica,
the Sicilian fleet returned to the West, and laid waste Acarnania
and Etolia; it then entered the Gulf of Corinth, and de-
barked a body of troops at Crissa. This force marched through
the country to Thebes, plundering every town and village on the

360 DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

way. Thebes offered no resistance and was plundered in the
most deliberate and barbarous manner. The inhabitants were
numerous and wealthy. The soil of Bceotia is extremely pro-
ductive, and numerous manufactures established in the city of
Thebes gave additional value to the abundant produce of agri-
cultural industry.

A century had elapsed since the citizens of Thebes had
gone out valiantly to fight the army of Slavonian rebels in the
reign of Michael IV (the Paphlagonian), and that defeat had
long been forgotten. But all military spirit was now dead, and
the Thebans had so long lived without any fear of invasion that
they had forgotten the use of arms. The Sicilians found them
not only unprepared to offer any resistance, but so surprised
that they had not even adopted any effectual measures to secure
or conceal their movable property. The conquerors, secure
against all danger of interruption, plundered Thebes at their
leisure. Not only gold, silver, jewels, and church plate were
carried off, but even the goods found in the warehouses, and
the rarest articles of furniture in private houses, were trans-
ported to the ships. Bales of silk and dyed leather were sent
off to the fleet as deliberately as if they had been legally pur-
chased in time of peace. When all ordinary means of collecting
booty were exhausted, the citizens were compelled to take an
oath on the Holy Scriptures that they had not concealed any
portion of their property; yet many of the wealthiest were
dragged away captive, in order to profit by their ransom; and
many of the most skilful workmen in the silk manufactories,
for which Thebes had long been famous, were pressed on
board the fleet to labor at the oar.

From Bceotia the army passed to Corinth. Nicephorus
Caluphes, the governor, retired into the Aero-Corinth, but the
garrison appeared to his cowardly heart not strong enough to
defend this impregnable fortress, and he surrendered it to
George Antiochenus, the Sicilian admiral, on the first summons.
On examining the fortress of which he had thus unexpectedly
gained possession, the admiral could not help exclaiming that
he fought under the protection of heaven, for if Caluphes had
not been more timid than a virgin, Corinth should have re-
pulsed every attack.

DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE 361

Corinth was sacked as cruelly as Thebes; men of rank,
beautiful women, and skilful artisans, with their wives and
families, were carried away into captivity. Even the relics of
St. Theodore were taken from the church in which they were
preserved; and it was not until the whole Sicilian fleet was
laden with as much of the wealth of Greece as it was capable
of transporting that the admiral ordered it to sail. The Sicilians
did not venture to retain possession of the impregnable citadel
of Corinth, as it would have been extremely difficult for them to
keep up their communications with the garrison. This invasion
of Greece was conducted entirely as a plundering expedition,
having for its object to inflict the greatest possible injury on
the Byzantine empire, while it collected the largest possible
quantity of booty for the Sicilian troops. Corfu was the only
conquest of which Roger retained possession.

The ruin of the Greek commerce and manufactures has
been ascribed to the transference of the silk trade from Thebes
and Corinth to Palermo, under the judicious protection it re-
ceived from Roger; but it would be more correct to say that
the injudicious and oppressive financial administration of the
Byzantine emperors destroyed the commercial prosperity and
manufacturing industry of the Greeks; while the wise liberality
and intelligent protection of the Norman kings extended the
commerce and increased the industry of the Sicilians.

When the Sicilian fleet returned to Palermo, Roger deter-
mined to employ all the silk manufacturers in their original
occupations. He consequently collected all their families to-
gether, and settled them at Palermo, supplying them with the
means of exercising their industry with profit to themselves,
and inducing them to teach his own subjects to manufacture
the richest brocades and to rival the rarest productions of the
East.

Roger, unlike most of the monarchs of his age, paid par-
ticular attention to improving the wealth of his dominions by
increasing the prosperity of his subjects. During his reign the
cultivation of the sugar-cane was introduced into Sicily. The
conduct of Manuel was very different; when he concluded
peace with William, the son and successor of Roger, in 1158,
he paid no attention to the commercial interests of his Greek

362 DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

subjects; the silk manufactures of Thebes and Corinth were
not reclaimed and reinstated in their native seats; they were
left to exercise their industry for the profit of their new prince,
while their old sovereign would have abandoned them to perish
from want. Under such circumstances it is not remarkable
that the commerce and the manufactures of Greece were trans-
ferred in the course of another century to Sicily and Italy.

CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL
HISTORY

EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME
A.D. 843-1161

JOHN RUDD, LL.D.

CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL
HISTORY

EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME
A.D. 843-1161

JOHN RUDD, LL.D.

Events treated at length are here indicated in krge
type ; the numerals following give volume and page.

Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of
the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX
VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where
the several events are fully treated.

A.D.

843. Messina in Sicily captured by the Saracens.

Feudalism may be said to become an actuality from about this time.
See " FEUDALISM : ITS FRANKISH BIRTH AND ENGLISH DEVELOP-
MENT," v, i.

The Danes — called by Arabian writers " Magioges" people of Gog
and Magog — land at Lisbon from fifty-four ships and carry off a rich
booty.

The treaty of Verdun, between the three sons of Louis le Dtbonnaire.
See " DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v, 22.

844. Lothair gives the title king of Italy to his son Louis, who is
crowned at Rome.

Abderrahman fits out a fleet to resist the Danes who have infested the
neighborhood of Cadiz and Seville,

845. Paris is pillaged for the first time by the Danes or Northmen.
See " DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v, 22.

Hamburg is looted and destroyed by the Danes.

846. Rome is attacked by the Saracens, who, after plundering the
country, lay siege to Gaeta.

Spain afflicted by a great drought and swarms of locusts.

847. A violent storm drives the Saracens from the siege of Gaeta.
The distress in Spain is relieved by Abderrahman, who remits the

taxes and constructs aqueducts and fountains.

848. Louis, King of Italy, drives the Saracens out of Beneventum.

365

366 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

Bordeaux is assailed by the Northmen, but they are vigorously re-
pulsed. See " DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v, 22.

Pope Leo IV adds a new quarter to the city of Rome by surrounding
the Vatican with walls.

849. Birth of Alfred the Great. See "CAREER OF ALFRED THE
GREAT," v, 49.

Gottschalk, a German bishop who preached the doctrine of twofold
predestination, sentenced by the Council of Quincy to be flogged and
suffer perpetual imprisonment.

The Saracens range at will through the Mediterranean ; they are de-
feated at the mouth of the Tiber by the combined fleets of Naples,
Gaeta, and Amalphi.

On Gallic soil the benificium and practice of commendation is spe-
cially fostered. See "FEUDALISM: ITS FRANKISH BIRTH AND ENG-
LISH DEVELOPMENT," v, i.

850. Roric, a nephew of Harold, collects a piratical armament in
Friesland and attacks adjacent coasts ; Lothair grants Durstadt to him to
secure his own lands.

Pe*pin strengthens himself in Aquitaine by leagues with the North-
men. See " DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v, 22.

851. Danes ascend the Rhine with 252 ships and plunder Ghent, Co-
logne, Treves, and Aix-la-Chapelle.

Roric, with 350 sail, proceeds up the Thames and pillages Canterbury
and London, after defeating the King of Mercia ; he is at last defeated by
Ethelwulf , with great slaughter, at Ockley.

852. A revolt against the Moslems in Armenia.

853. Hastings' (the Danish chief) ruse at Tuscany. See " DECAY OF
THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v, 22.

855. Death of Lothair, Emperor of the Franks; civil war between his
sons.

A band of Danes keep the Isle of Sheppey through the winter; their
first foothold in England.

860. Iceland discovered by the Northmen.

862. Rurik, the Varangian chief, conquers Novgorod and Kiov and
lays the foundation of the Russian empire.

863. Cyril and Methodius, the "apostles of the Slavs," undertake the
conversion of the Moravians.

Pope Nicholas deposes Photius and declares Ignatius to be the pa-
triarch of Constantinople ; Photius in turn excommunicates the Pope.
Charles the Bald founds the County of Flanders.

864. Pope Nicholas asserts his exclusive right to appoint and depose
bishops ; the sovereigns and prelates of France and Germany resist his
claim.

Christianity first introduced into Russia ; it makes little progress.

865. First naval expedition of the Varangians or Russians against
Constantinople ; their fleet is dispersed by a storm.

866. East Anglia invaded by a numerous body of Danes.

CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY 367

Accession of Alfonso the Great of Asturias.

868. Nottingham captured by the Danes; they are besieged by Burh-
red, Alfred, and his brother, who allow them to return to York with their
booty. See " CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT," v, 49.

869. Eighth general council held at Constantinople ; the deposition of
Photius confirmed and all iconoclasts anathematized.

870. Malta captured by the Saracens.

East Anglia captured by the Danes; Edmund, titular king of the
country, is treacherously slain by them ; is afterward canonized.

871. Hincmar,a French prelate, encourages Charles the Bald to resist
the authority assumed by the Pope over the church of France.

Bari, a Saracen fortress in Southern Italy, is surrendered to the
Franks and Greeks.

Alfred ascends the throne of Wessex. See " CAREER OF ALFRED
THE GREAT," v, 49.

872. Louis of Germany relinquishes to Emperor Louis his portion of
Lorraine.

873. On the approach of Emperor Louis with an army the Saracens,
who were besieging Salerno, retire ; they land in Calabria and commit
great depredations.

Locusts lay waste Italy, France, and Germany.
Organs introduced into the churches of Germany.

874. Mercia is conquered by the Danes, who set up Ceolwulf as their
king.

Iceland is settled by the Danes.

875. Death of Emperor Louis; Charles the Bald and Louis of Ger-
many contend for the succession. The former, by granting new privi-
leges to the Church of Rome, obtains the support of the Pope, and is
acknowledged as the king of Italy and emperor of the West.

Alfred, King of Wessex, fits out a fleet and conquers the Danes in a
great sea battle. See " CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT," v, 49.

876. Death of Louis of Germany ; division of his kingdom among his
three sons: Bavaria to Carloman; Saxony to Louis the Stammerer; and
East France (Franconia and Swabia) to Charles the Fat. Their uncle,
Charles the Bald, attempts to dispossess them, but is defeated by Louis
at Andernach.

Rollo, at the head of the Northmen, enters the Seine and makes his
first settlement in Normandy. See " DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EM-
PIRE," v, 22.

877. No emperor of the West for three years.

Carloman acquires the crown of Italy; the Pope, who opposes him,
is driven from Rome by Lambert, Duke of Spoleto, and takes refuge in
France.

A large traffic in slaves carried on by the Venetians.

Count Boso founds the kingdom of Florence.

878. Alfred defeats a great host of the Danes at Eddington. See
" CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT," v, 49.

368 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

Syracuse captured by the Saracens, who become the masters of Sicily.

879. Methodius forbidden by the Pope to perform the services of the
Church for the Slavonians in their own language.

The kingdom of Cisjurane, Burgundy, founded ; it included Provence,
Dauphine", and the southern part of Savoy.

880. Germany is ravaged by the Northmen.

Alfred, the English King, defeats the Danes at the battle of Ethandun ;
by treaty he gives them equal rights, and they acknowledge his suprem-
acy. See " CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT," v, 49.

881. Methodius gets leave to use the Slavonic tongue in the churches.
Charles the Fat ascends the throne of Italy and Germany ; is emperor

of the West.

882. Albategni, the Arabian astronomer, observes the autumnal equi-
nox, September igth.

883. Alfred sends Singhelm and Athelstan on missions to Rome and
the Christian church in India.

884. Charles the Fat reunites the Frankish empire of Charlemagne.

885. Siege of Paris by the Northmen. See " DECAY OF THE PRANK-
ISH EMPIRE," v, 22.

886. Alfred the Great said to have founded the University of Oxford.

887. Deposition of Charles the Fat; Arnulf, natural son of Carloman
of Bavaria, elected by the nobles.

888. Death of Charles the Fat; final disruption of the Frankish em-
pire ; the crown of France in dispute between the Count of Paris, Eudes,
and Charles the Simple. See "DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE," v,
22.

Founding of the kingdom of Transjurane, Burgundy, which includes
the northern part of Savoy and all Switzerland between the Reuss and
the Jura.

Alfred the Great begins his translations from Latin into Anglo-Saxon.
See " AUGUSTINE'S MISSIONARY WORK IN ENGLAND," iv, 182.

890. Southern Italy constituted a province of the Greek empire and
called Lorn bard ia.

891. King Amulf, of Germany, defeats the Northmen or Danes at
Louvain.

894. Arnulf becomes emperor of Germany.

Hungarians (Magyars) cross the Carpathians and occupy the plains of
the Theiss.

895. Rome is captured by Emperor Arnulf of Germany; he is crowned
emperor of the West.

896. Pope Stephen VII declares the election of his predecessor, For-
mosus, invalid ; disinters his body and has it thrown in the Tiber.

897. Pope Stephen imprisoned and strangled.

Alfred constructs a powerful navy and defeats Hastings the Dane.
See " CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT," v, 49.

899. Accession of Louis the Child, on the death of Arnulf, to the
German throne.

CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY 369

900. Hungarians ravage Northern Italy.

901. Death of Alfred the Great, King of England; his son, Edward
the Elder, succeeds.

904. Russians, with a large naval force, attack Constantinople, and the
Saracens Thessalonica.

907. Bavaria desolated by the Hungarians.

909. Founding of the Fatimite caliphate in Africa. See " CONQUEST
OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES," v, 94.

911. End of the Carlovingian line in Germany. See " HENRY THE
FOWLER FOUNDS THE SAXON LINE OF GERMAN KINGS," v, 82.

912. Rollo, converted to Christianity, takes the name of Robert and
receives from Peter the Simple the province afterward called Normandy,
of which he is the first duke. See " DECAY OF THE FRANKISH EM-
PIRE," v, 22.

913. Igor, son of Rurik, by the death of his guardian, Oleg, is invested
with the government of Russia.

Bodies of Hungarians and Slavs make inroads on German territory.
See " HENRY THE FOWLER FOUNDS THE SAXON LINE OF GERMAN
KINGS," v, 82.

914.* John X elected pope through the intrigues of Theodora.

916. Berengar is crowned emperor of the West, in Italy.

918. Death of Conrad, the King of Germany. See "HENRY THE
FOWLER FOUNDS THE SAXON LINE OF GERMAN KINGS," v, 82.

919. Founding of the Danish kingdom of Dublin, Ireland.

" HENRY THE FOWLER FOUNDS THE SAXON LINE OF GERMAN
KINGS." See v, 82.

923. Rudolph of Burgundy disputes with Charles the Simple for the
crown of France.

924. Germany is overrun and devastated by the Hungarians.
Death of Berengar, upon which the imperial title lapses.

925. Edward the Elder is succeeded by his son Athelstan, in England.

926. Henry the Fowler conquers the Slavonians; he establishes the
margravate of Brandenburg.

928.* Guidoand Marozia usurp supreme temporal power in Rome and
confine Pope John X in prison, where he dies.

929. Charles the Simple dies in captivity at Pe*ronne.

Abu Taher, the Carmathian leader, plunders Mecca and massacres
the pilgrims.

930. Prague is besieged by Henry the Fowler, who becomes superior
lord of Bohemia ; his son, Otho, marries Eadgith, sister of Athelstan,
King of England.

931. Marozia still rules in Rome ; she makes her son pope John XI.

932. Hugh marries Marozia and is expelled from Rome by her son
Alberic, who confines his mother, and his brother, Pope John, in St. An-
gelo and governs the city.

933. Henry the Fowler is victorious over the Hungarians at Merse-

* Date uncertain.

E., VOL. V.— 24.

370 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

burg. See " HENRY THE FOWLER FOUNDS THE SAXON LINE OF GER-
MAN KINGS," v, 82.

Union of Cis- and Transjurane Burgundy into one realm, the kingdom
of Aries.

Saracens invade Castile and are defeated at Uxama.

936. Death of Henry the Fowler; accession of Otho the Great in Ger-
many and of Louis d'Outre-Mer in France. Louis was given the surname
for having been in exile in England, whence he was recalled to the crown.

From this time chivalry may be said to arise. See " GROWTH AND
DECADENCE OF CHIVALRY," v, 109.

937. Confederation of Scots and Irish with the Danes of Northum-
berland, totally defeated by Athelstan, at Brunanburh.

France is invaded by the Hungarians.

939. The Marquis of Istria levies imposts on Venetian merchants, the
repeal of which is enforced by the Doge suspending all intercourse be-
tween the two states.

940. Death of King Athelstan ; his brother Edmund succeeds to the
English throne.

941. Constantinople attacked by the Russians under Igor; they are
repelled by Romanus.

945. Death of Igor; his widow, Olga, governs the Russians during
the minority of their son Swatoslaus.

Cumberland and Westmoreland, England, granted as a fief to Mal-
colm, King of Scotland.

946. Edmund, who had conquered Mercia and the " Five Boroughs "
of the Danish confederacy, England, slain by an outlaw ; his brother
Edred succeeds.

951. Otho the Great marches an army into Italy; he dethrones Beren-
gar for cruelly ill-treating Adelaide.

952. Otho restores Italy to Berengar and his son; they do homage to
him at the Diet of Augsburg.

955. Otho vanquishes the Hungarians on the Lech; he afterward con-
quers the Slavonians.

Olga, the Russian Princess, baptized at Constantinople ; she carries
back into her own country some beginnings of civilization.

956. Many provinces, including Armenia, recovered from the Saracens
by the Eastern Empire.

959. St. Dunstan mad" archbishop of Canterbury on the accession of
Edgar.

961. Berengar finally dethroned by Otho the Great; the sovereignty
of Italy passes from Charlemagne's descendants to German rulers.

962. Otho the Great, master of Italy; his coronation as emperor of
the Romans by Pope John XII ; establishment of the Holy Roman Em-
pire of the German nation.

963. Nicephorus Phocas defeats the Saracens and recover* the former
yrovinces of the empire as far as the Euphrates.

Al Hakem, Caliph of Cordova, famous as a patron of literature and

CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY 371

learning, and who is said to have collected a library of 600,000 volumes,
employs agents in Africa and Arabia to purchase or copy manuscripts.

King Edgar, England, defeats the Welsh and exacts an annual tribute
of three hundred wolves' heads.

964. Pope Leo VIII is expelled ; John XII reinstated, he dies soon
after ; Rome is besieged and captured by the Emperor, after a revolt en-
couraged by Berengar.

966. After 328 years' subjection Antioch is recovered from the Sara-
cens.

Bulgaria invaded by the Russians, who also extend their dominion to
the Black Sea.

Miecislas, ruler of Poland, embraces Christianity.

969. Kahira (now Cairo) built by the Fatimites, who establish a
caliphate in Egypt. See " CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE FATIMITES,"
v, 94.

Nicephorus Phocas, Emperor of the East, murdered by John Zimisces,
who succeeds.

971. All munitions of war and arms are by the Venetians forbidden to
be sold by their merchants to the Saracens.

973. On the death of his father, Otho the Great, Otho II ascends the
throne of the German empire. His Empress, Theophania, introduces
Greek customs and manners into Germany.

976. Henry, Duke of Bavaria, defeated by Otho II and deposed, takes
refuge in Bohemia.

Death of Al Hakem; his reign the most glorious of the Saracenic
dominion in Spain.

Commotion in Venice ; the Doge attempts to introduce mercenary
troops and is slain ; his palace, St. Mark's, and other churches burned.

978. Otho II makes a victorious movement into France.

979.* King Edward the Martyr assassinated by command of his
mother-in-law, Elfrida ; Ethelred the Unready succeeds.

980. Theophania urges her husband, Otho II, to claim the Greek
provinces in Italy ; he advances with his army to Ravenna.

Vladimir obtains the assistance of the sea-kings, defeats his brother,
Jaropolk, puts him to death, and becomes sole ruler of Russia.

982. Saracens of Africa are invited by the Greek emperors to join
them in opposing Otho ; battle of Basientello, total defeat of Otho ; he is
taken prisoner, but escapes by swimming.

983. Eric the Red, a Norseman, first visits Greenland, which he thus
names, and afterward settles. See " LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMER-
ICA," v, 141.

Death of Otho II ; Otho III succeeds to the throne of Germany undei
the regency of his mother, Theophania.

987. Death of Louis V, the last of the Carlovingian line; Hugh
Capet is elected king of France; this inaugurates the Capetian dy-
nasty.

* Date uncertain.

372 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

988. Vladimir the Great of Russia embraces Christianity. See " CON-
VERSION OF VLADIMIR THE GREAT," v, 128.

989. Sedition in Rome ; Empress Theophania arrives there and sup-
presses it.

In Germany rural counts and barons commence their depredations on
the properties of their neighbors.

Learned men from all parts of the East flock to Cordova, Almansor,
the Saracen regent, having set apart a fund to promote literature.

991. Archbishop Gerbert, of Rheims, introduces the use of Arabic
numerals, which he had learned at Cordova.

Ipswich and Maldon, England, ravaged by the Danes ; a tribute raised
for them by means of the " Danegild " tax.

994. Hugh Capet maintains Gerbert in the see of Rheims, against the
opposition of the Pope.

With a fleet of ninety-four ships the kings of Norway and Denmark
attack London ; they are beaten off by the citizens.

996. Death of Hugh Capet ; his son Robert succeeds.

997. Venetians conquer the coast and islands of the Adriatic as far as
Ragusa ; their Doge styles himself duke of Dalmatia.

Death of Gejza, first Christian prince of Hungary.
Insurrection of peasants in Normandy.

998. Crescentius, having usurped power in Rome and expelled the
Pope, is defeated, captured, and put to death by Otho III.

1000. Leif Ericson and Biorn discover America. See " LEIF ERICSON
DISCOVERS AMERICA," v, 141.

Otho III and Boleslas the Valiant, King of Poland, meet at Gnesen.

Expectation of the end of the world causes the sowing of seed and
other agricultural work to be neglected ; famine ensues therefrom.

Duke Stephen of Hungary receives the royal title from Pope Sylves-
ter II.

First invasion of India by Mahmud. See " MAHOMETANS IN INDIA,"
v, 151.

1002. Massacre of Danes in England ; the Day of St. Brice.
Henry, Duke of Bavaria, elected king of Germany on the death of

Otho III.

1003. Sweyn of Denmark invades England to avenge the massacre of
his people.

1013. After various repulses and successes Sweyn takes nearly the
whole of England ; King Ethelred and his Queen flee to her brother
Richard, Duke of Normandy.

Imperial coronation of Henry II.

1014. Death of Sweyn. Ethelred returns to England ; he battles
with the Danes, under Sweyn's son, Canute, who is driven from the coun-
try.

King Brian, the Brian Boroimhe or Boru, the most famous of Irish
kings, defeats the Danes at the battle of Clontarf , but perishes in the con-
flict.

CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY 373

1016. Pope Benedict VI 1 1 repulses the Saracens at Luni, Tuscany ;
they besiege Salerno and are defeated by the aid of a band of Norman
pilgrims returning from Jerusalem.

Edmund " Ironsides," the English King, assassinated. See " CANUTE
BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND," v, 164.

1017. Swatopolk, Grand Duke of Russia, defeated by his brother,
Jaroslav, Prince of Novgorod, seeks an asylum in Poland.

All England acknowledges Canute as king. See " CANUTE BECOMES
KING OF ENGLAND," v, 164.

1018. Complete destruction of the Bulgarian realm by the Eastern em-
peror Basil II.

Swatopolk finally expelled from Russia by Jaroslav, who becomes
ruler.

1020. Death of Firdusi, a famous Persian poet.

1022. Guido Aretinus invents the staff, and is the first to adopt as
names for the notes of the musical scale the initial syllables of the hem-
istichs of a hymn in honor of St. John the Baptist.

1024. Death of the emperor Henry II of Germany; the Franconian
dynasty inaugurated by Conrad II.

1027. Conrad II crowned emperor at Rome; Canute of England and
Rudolph of Burgundy attend the ceremony.

Schleswig is formally ceded to Denmark by Conrad II.

1028. Canute invades Norway ; he conquers King Olaf and annexes
his dominions. See "CANUTE BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND," v, 164.

1031. End of the Ommiad caliphate of Cordova ; Spain divided by the
Moorish chiefs into many states.

1033. Institution of the " Truce of God." A suspension of private
feuds observed in England, France, Italy, and elsewhere. Such a truce
provided that these feuds should cease on all the more important church
festivals and fasts, from Thursday evening to Monday morning, during
Lent, or similar occasions.

Castile created an independent kingdom by Sancho the Great, King
of Navarre.

Conrad II extends his dominion over the Arletan territories.

1035. Death of King Canute; his sons, Hardicanute in Denmark,
Harold in England, and Sweyn in Norway, succeed him. See " CANUTE
BECOMES KING OF ENGLAND," v, 164.

Aragon created an independent kingdom.

1037. Avicenna, Arabian physician and scholar, dies.*

Harold becomes king of all England.

1039. Murder of King Duncan, of Scotland, by Macbeth, who suc-
ceeds.

1042. End of the Danish rule in England: Hardicanute succeeded by
Edward the Confessor.

1045. Ferdinand of Castile exacts tribute from his Moorish neigh-
bors.

* Date uncertain.

374 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

1046. Henry III holds a council at Sutri on the question of the pa-
pacy. See " HENRY III DEPOSES THE SIMONIACAL POPES," v, 177.

1047. Count Guelf given the duchy Carinthia by Emperor Henry III.

1048. On the death of Clement II, the deposed Pope again intrudes
himself. See "HENRY III DEPOSES THE SIMONIACAL POPES," v, 177.

1049. Hildebrand, the monk, assumes charge of the patrimony of St.
Peter, at Rome.

1050. Bdrenger of Tours condemned and imprisoned for denying the
doctrine of transubstantiation.

1051. William of Normandy visits England; he confers with Edward
the Confessor.

1052. Archbishop Robert, with the Norman bishops and nobles,
driven out of England.

1053. In Italy the Norman conquests of that country are conferred on
them as a fief of the Church.

1054. Separation of the Greek and Latin churches. See " DISSENSION
AND SEPARATION OF THE GREEK AND ROMAN CHURCHES," v, 189.

1055. Togrul Beg drives the Buyides from Bagdad and establishes his
authority there.

1056. Death of Emperor Henry III; his son, Henry IV, is elected
king under the regency of his mother, Agnes.

Malcolm defeats Macbeth, King of Scotland, at Dunsinane.

1057. Harold, son of Earl Godwin, is designated heir to the throne of
England. See " NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND," v, 204.

1059. Nicholas II and the Council of Rome decree that future popes
shall be elected by the college of cardinals, but confirmed by the people
and clergy of Rome and the emperor.

1060. King Andrew slain in battle by his brother, Bela, who ascends
the throne of Hungary.

1061. Robert Guiscard and his brother Roger, at the head of the Nor-
mans, engage in the conquest of Sicily from the Saracens.

1062. The Archbishop of Cologne, Anno, assumes the reins of gov-
ernment after seizing the young emperor Henry IV.

1066. Death of Edward the Confessor, who is succeeded by Harold II.
The Norwegians invr.de England ; they are defeated by Harold. William,
Duke of Normandy, invades and conquers England. See " NORMAN
CONQUEST OF ENGLAND," v, 204.

1067. Council of Mantua; Hildebrand denies the imperial right to in-
terfere in the election of a pope.

1068. Carrier pigeons are employed by the Saracens to convey intel-
ligence to the besieged in Palermo.

1069. Morocco founded by Abu-Bekr, Ameer of Lantuna.

1071. Alp Arslan, the Seljuk Sultan, defeats and captures the Eastern
Emperor, Romanus Diogenes.

1072. Palermo is taken by the Normans, who reduce the whole of
Sicily.

1073. Lissa, taken by the Normans, is recovered by the Venetians.

CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY 375

Hildebrand elected pope; he takes the name of Gregory VII; the
sale of church benefices in Germany forbidden by him. See " TRIUMPHS
OF HILDEBRAND," v, 231.

1074. Gregory VII suggests the first idea of a general crusade against
the Turks.

1075. Lay investiture prohibited by a council called by Gregory VII.
See "TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND," v, 231.

1076. Atziz, Malek Shah's lieutenant, conquers Syria from the Fati-
mites of Egypt, and takes Jerusalem.

Christian pilgrims are persecuted by the Seljukian Turks.

Henry IV, Emperor of Germany, holds a council at Rome which de-
poses Gregory VII. In union with the German princes the Pope deposes
the Emperor.

1077. Pope Gregory exacts an annual tribute from Alfonso, King of
Castile.

At Canossa Henry IV humbles himself before the Pope and is ab-
solved. See "TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND," v, 231.

1079. Boleslas of Poland excommunicated by Gregory and expelled
by his subjects.

1080. Henry IV convenes a council which deposes Gregory VII ; it
elects Guibert, Antipope Clement III, in his stead.

End of the war between Henry and Rudolph of Saxony caused by the
death of the latter.

1081. Constantinople captured by Alexis Comnenus, who is placed by
his soldiers on the Byzantine throne.

1084. Gregory VII is besieged in the castle of St. Angelo ; Robert
Guiscard delivers the Pope. See "TRIUMPHS OF HILDEBRAND," v, 231.

1085. Death of Gregory VII, in exile at Salerno ; the papacy vacant
till the following year.

Conquest of Toledo from the Moors by Alfonso of Castile.

1086. "COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK." See v, 242.

The Mahometans of Spain invite the chief of the Almoravides to as-
sist them. See " DECLINE OF THE MOORISH POWER IN SPAIN," v, 256.

1087. King William of England invades France ; he dies at Rouen.
His eldest son, Robert, inherits Normandy ; his second son, William
Rufus, secures the throne of England.

1088. Yussef is called into Spain by the Moorish princes ; their jeal-
ousies and discords render his assistance unavailing. See " DECLINE OF
THE MOORISH POWER IN SPAIN," v, 256.

1089. Henry IV excommunicated by Pope Urban II.
A violent earthquake in England.

The disease known as St. Anthony's fire breaks out in Lorraine.

1090. Hasan, Subah of Nishapur, collects a band of Carmathians
who are named after him, " Assassins."

William Rufus, King of England, invades Normandy and captures
St. Valery.

1091. Yussef conquers Seville and Almeria, sends Almoatamad to

376 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

Africa, and becomes supreme ruler in Mahometan Spain. See " DECLINE
OF THE MOORISH POWER IN SPAIN," v, 256.

1092. Guibert's party hold the castle of St. Angelo ; Guibert's title to
the papacy is still asserted by Henry IV.

Complete disruption of the empire of the Seljuks follows the death of
Shah Malek.

1093. King Malcolm of Scotland invades England ; he is killed near
Alnwick, by Roger de Mowbray.

1094. Sancho, King of Aragon and Navarre, falls in battle ; he is suc-
ceeded by his son Pedro.

Peter the Hermit goes on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. See " THE
FIRST CRUSADE," v, 276.

1095. Philip and Henry again excommunicated by Pope Urban II.
Henry of Besamjon marries Theresa, daughter of Alfonso the Valiant,

who erects Portugal into a county for his son-in-law.

1096. Aphdal, the Fatimite, expels the sons of Ortok from Jerusalem.
Movement of the first crusading armies ; massacre of Jews in Europe.

See "THE FIRST CRUSADE," v, 276.

1097. William Rufus expels Archbishop Anselm from England in de-
fiance of the papal legate.

Emperor Henry IV protects the German Jews.

Death of Albert Azzo, Marquis of Lombardy, more than 100 years
old ; he was father of Guelf IV, the progenitor of the Brunswick family,
afterward one of the English royal lines.

The crusaders take Nicaea ; the Eastern emperor Alexius, suspicious
of the crusaders, obtains the city of Nicaea for himself. See "THE
FIRST CRUSADE," v, 276.

1098. Edgar, son of Malcolm, seated on the throne of Scotland by
Edgar Atheling with an English army.

Pope Urban II holds a council at Bari to condemn the doctrines of
the Greek Church.

1099. Jerusalem captured by the crusaders. See " THE FIRST CRU-
SADE," v, 276.

Founding of th - order of the Knights Hospitallers; Gerard of Jeru-
salem the first provost or grand master.

Coronation of Henry V, second son of the Emperor, as king of the
Romans.

1 100. New antipopes arise on the death of Guibert (Clement III), one
of whom assumes the name of Sylvester IV.

William Rufus accidentally slain ; Henry I becomes king of England ;
he renews the laws of Edward the Confessor and unites the Saxon and
Norman races by his marriage with Matilda, granddaughter of Edmund
" Ironside."

noi. Robert, Duke of Normandy, invades England and makes war
on his brother, Henry I.

Guelf, Duke of Bavaria, and William, Duke of Aquitaine, conduct a
large body of crusaders to the East. United with those who set out in

CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY 377

the preceding year, they are met by Kilidsch Arslan, on entering Asia
Minor, and are cut to pieces or dispersed.

1 102. Pope Paschal II obtains from Matilda a deed of gift of all her
states to the Church.

Coloman, King of Hungary, conquers Croatia and Dalmatia.

1103. Yussef's son AH recognized as heir to the thrones of Spain and
Africa.

1104. Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, defeats the Turks and captures
Acre.

Emperor Henry IV faces a rebellion of his son, incited by the papal
party.

1105. Interview between Emperor Henry and his son at Elbingen ; a
diet is called to be held at Mainz for the settlement of their dispute.

The English, under King Henry, take Caen and Bayeux in Normandy.

Defeat of the Turks in an attempt to retake Jerusalem ; Bohemond,
Prince of Tarentum, who had taken Antioch from the Turks, made pris-
oner.

1106. King Henry I overthrows Duke Robert, who is captured, and
secures Normandy.

Death of Henry IV and accession of his son Henry V to the German
throne ; the new Emperor asserts his right to appoint bishops.

1108. Death of Philip, King of France ; Louis VI, the Fat, succeeds.

1109. Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, assisted by a Venetian fleet, capt-
ures Tripoli.

Portugal declared independent and the hereditary succession estab-
lished in Count Henry's family.

mi. Emperor Henry V enters Rome ; bloody contests between his
soldiers and the people. Pope Paschal II, a prisoner, resigns the right
of investiture and crowns the Emperor.

1113. Death of Swatopolk, Duke of Russia; his brother Vladimir
succeeds.

1114. War in Wales ; King Henry I erects castles there to secure his
conquests.

1117. The Doge of Venice falls at Zara in defending Dalmatia against
the Hungarians.

1118. "FOUNDATION OF THE ORDER OF KNIGHTS TEMPLAR."
See v, 301.

On the death of Paschal II the cardinals elect Gelasius II ; the Em-
peror appoints the Archbishop of Braga to assume the papal dignity under
the name of Gregory VIII. The factions afterward known as the Guelfs
and Ghibellines arose from this event.

1119. Battle of Noyon, by which Henry I reestablishes his ascendency
in Normandy.

Defeat of the Turks at Antioch by King Baldwin II and the Knights
Hospitallers.

Henry I resists the papal claim to investiture in England ; banishment
of Thurstan, Archbishop of Canterbury.

378 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

nao. Sinking of the White Ship (La Blanche Nef), in which Prince
William, son of Henry I, was lost. The King is said to have "never
smiled again * after the receipt of the news.

xxai. Siege of Sutri by the army of Pope Calixtus II, and surrender
of Antipope Gregory.

1122. Henry V and Calixtus II compromise, at the Diet of Worms,
the dispute respecting the right of investiture.

Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, and Jocelynde Courtenay made prisoners
by the Turks.

Abelard, a noted French theologian, accused of heresy at the Council
of Soissons, is condemned to burn his writings.

1123. Ninth general council ; First Lateran Council.

War renewed in Normandy by the rebellion of certain powerful
barons ; Henry I, King of England, takes their castles.

1124. A rich Pisan convoy, on its voyage from Sardinia, captured by
the Genoese.

1125. Death of the emperor Henry V of Germany, which ends the
Franconian dynasty ; the Duke of Saxony, Lothair II, elected his suc-
cessor ; he declares war against the Hohenstaufens.

Punishment of the mintmen in England for issuing base coin.

1 126. King Henry leaves Normandy and takes his prisoners to England.

1127. Marriage of Henry's daughter, Matilda, to Geoffrey Plantag-
enet ; she is acknowledged by the English barons as heiress to her fa-
ther's throne. See " STEPHEN USURPS THE ENGLISH CROWN," v, 317.

Death of William, Duke of Apulia ; Roger II, Great Count of Sicily,
succeeds. This unites the Norman conquests in Italy with Sicily ; the
Pope excommunicates him.

1128. Conrad, Duke of Franconia, of the Hohenstaufen house,
crowned king of Italy at Milan, in opposition to Lothair II ; he is ex-
communicated by the Pope.

Roger II overcomes the papal resistance and is formally acknowl-
edged duke of Apulia and Calabria.

1129. Kn\r Henry of England releases his Norman prisoners and
restores their lands to them.

1130. On the death of Pope Honorius II the cardinals divide into two
factions, one of which elects Innocent II, and the other the antipope
Anacletus 1 1 . The latter gains possession of the Lateran and is there
consecrated ; Innocent takes refuge in France.

1131.* Birth of Maimonides, who, next to Moses, is believed to have
had the greatest influence on Jewish thought.

1132. Lothair II goes to Rome in support of Pope Innocent II against
Antipope Anacletus II ; he expels Conrad.

Wool-spinning is introduced into England by the Flemings at Wor-
stead ; hence the name " worsted."

1133. Lothair conducts Innocent to Rome and is there crowned em-
peror by him.

* Date uncertain.

CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY 379

1134. Aragon and Navarre choose separate sovereigns, who are pro-
tected by Alfonso the Noble, King of Castile.

1135. Death of Henry I of England ; Stephen usurps the throne. See
" STEPHEN USURPS THE ENGLISH CROWN," v, 317.

A copy of Justinian's Pandects said to have been discovered at Amalfi.
The house of Hohenstaufen forced into submission by Lothair.

1136. Lothair marches into Italy with a large army ; the cities make
submission.

Matilda resists Stephen's usurpation of the English crown, and in-
vades Normandy.

1137. Death of Louis VI ; his son, Louis VI I, succeeds to the French
crown.

1138. David I of Scotland defeated at the Battle of the Standard.
See " STEPHEN USURPS THE ENGLISH CROWN," v, 317.

Conrad, Duke of Franconia, elected emperor of Germany ; he founds
the Hohenstaufen dynasty. From his castle of Wiblingen his party takes
the name of Ghibellines ; his opponent, Henry Guelf , is put under the
ban of the empire, hence the papal party were called Guelfs.

1139. Pope Innocent II taken prisoner by Roger; a treaty of peace
confirms Roger's title. Arnold of Brescia is banished Italy. See "ANTI-
PAPAL DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT," v, 340.

Robert, Earl of Gloucester, a natural son of Henry I, promises as-
sistance to Matilda in her war against King Stephen of England. See
" STEPHEN USURPS THE ENGLISH CROWN," v, 317.

1140. Conrad III defeats the forces of Guelf VI, uncle of Henry the
Lion, while attempting to gain possession of Bavaria.

1141. Battle of Lincoln ; King Stephen defeated and carried pris-
oner to Bristol. See "STEPHEN USURPS THE ENGLISH CROWN," v,

3*7-

1142. Henry the Lion is invested with the duchy of Saxony by Conrad
III. His rival, Albert the Bear, created margrave of Brandenburg.

1143. Geisa, King of Hungary, invites German emigrants to join the
colony of that people in Transylvania.

1144. Edessa, Turkey, stormed and captured by Zenghi, Sultan of
Aleppo.

1145. Arnold of Brescia initiates the antipapal democratic movement.
See " ANTIPAPAL DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT," v, 340.

Disruption of the Almoravide kingdom in Spain.

1146. Prince Henry inherits Anjou and Maine ; Normandy submits to
him.

St. Bernard, at the instance of Pope Eugenius, preaches a crusade for
the protection of the Holy Land against Noureddin, Sultan of Aleppo.

Byzantium is ravaged by Roger, King of Sicily. See " DECLINE OF
THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE," v, 353.

Crusaders and mobs massacre Jews in Germany.

1147. Louis VII of France and Emperor Conrad III lead the Second
Crusade.

380 CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

Lisbon, after being taken from the Moors, is made the capital ct
Portugal.

Moscow, Russia, is founded by the Prince of Suzdal, Dolgoucki.

1148. Unsuccessful sieges of Damascus and Ascalon by the crusaders.

1149. Louis, returning by sea from his crusade, is captured by the
Greeks, and rescued by the Sicilian fleet.

1150. Victory of Manuel, the Byzantine Emperor, over the Servians,
who become vassals of that empire.

1151. Manuel invades Hungary, crosses the Danube, grants a truce to
Geisa, and carries a large booty to Constantinople.

1152. Death of Conrad III ; Frederick I, Barbarossa, elected em-
peror.

1153. Treaty by King Stephen and Henry Plantagenet concerning the
succession of the English crown. See " STEPHEN USURPS THE ENG-
LISH CROWN," v, 317.

1154. A large portion of France united with the crown of England on
the accession of Henry II, who founds the Plantagenet line, following
Stephen's death.

The first Italian expedition of Frederick Barbarossa.

Pope Adrian IV, by a bull, grants Ireland to the English crown.

1155. Frederick reestablishes the papal rule in Rome. Pope Adrian
IV orders the execution of Arnold. See " ANTIPAPAL DEMOCRATIC
MOVEMENT," v, 340.

1156. Henry the Lion, of the Guelf line, has Bavaria restored to him.
Austria erected into a duchy.

1157. Pope Adrian, in a letter to the German Emperor, asserts Ger-
many to be a papal benefice ; Frederick resists the claim.

Poland is compelled by Emperor Frederick I to pay him homage.

1158. Eric IX of Sweden conquers the coast of Finland and builds
Abo.

Frederick I, Barbarossa, a second time invades Italy; he captures
Milan.

1159. Election of Pope Alexander III; Frederick I creates an anti-
pope, Victor IV.

War ensues between Henry II of England and Louis VII of France ;
the former claiming the county of Toulouse, Southern France.

1160. Emperor Frederick I calls the Council of Pavia ; it declares
Victor to be pope ; Alexander excommunicates them all.

1161. Peace concluded between Henry II and Louis VII; they ac-
knowledge Alexander as pope. The kings of Denmark, Norway, Bohe-
mia, and Hungary declare in favor of Victor.

Henry II limits the papal authority in England.

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